seep vol.10 no.2 summer 1990

volume 1 0 no. 2

summer 1990

soviet and

east european performance

SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for Con-temporary 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 EDITOR , Edward Dee

ADVISORY BOARD Edwin Wilson, Chairman Marvin Carlson Leo Hecht Martha W. Coigney

CASTA EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Richard Brad Medoff

Copyright 1990 CASTA

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

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

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

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

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

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

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

"R K . . B " 10 eport on aztnuerz raun .... .. ... .............................................. .............. . ...

"Arpad Goncz Elected Interim President of Hungary ............................................ ............ ll

"Hungarian Playwright Attacked" ................................................................ 12

"The Polish Puppet Theatre: A Report from the UNIMA Conference" Jane McMahan ............................. .. .. ................................................ ............. 14

"Czechoslovak Theatre During the Velvet Revolution" Olga F. Chtiguel. ............................................................................................ 21

"Compensation: A Liturgy of Fact" Alma Law ....................................................................................................... 27

"New Life for an Old Idea: The Reappearance of Moscow's Bat" John Freedman ........................... ................................................................... 35

"Red Fish in America" Alma Law .......... ............................................................................................. 41

PAGES FROM THE PAST "A Moscow Letter--May 7, 1922" Nikolai Y arovoff .............. ............................ ......................... ... ..... .. 45

Contributors ............. : .............................................................. ....................... 53

Playscripts in Translation Series .................................................................. 54

Subscription Policy ..................... .............................. ...................... , .. ...... ...... 56

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EDITORIAL POLICY

Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no more than 2,500 words, performance and film reviews, and bibliographies. Please bear in mind that all of submissions must concern themselves either with contemporary materials on Soviet and East European theatre, drama and film, or with new approaches to older materials in recently published works, or new performances of older plays. In other words, we wel-come 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 pub-lications, we do require copyright release statements.

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

All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread. The Chicago Manual of 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.

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FROM THE EDITORS

Soviet and East European Performance has a new look.

Readers of the first Issue of 1990 will already have noticed that we

are now including photographs to illustrate the reviews and articles.

We urge you to send us two or three pictures with your submissions,

preferably showing the staging of a production or the nature of an

ensemble rather than close-ups of individual performers. Wherever

possible we shall use appropriate Illustrative photographs.

In this issue we continue the emphasis on the extraordinary

developments in Eastern European theatre brought about by the

social and political changes following upon the end of the cold war.

Articles and reports on the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,

and Romania reveal more of the involvement of theatre and theatre

artists in the remarkable transformations occurring in those

countries--transformations that sometimes produce heroic

responses, but may be fraught with tragic consequences. Actors as

leaders of revolution and playwrights as heads of state are aspects of

"performance" in Eastern Europe that warrant serious attention.

Theatre is still of the utmost importance in the other half of Europe--

the new freedoms have not yet reduced it to the role of mere

entertainment.

Daniel Gerould and Alma Law

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EVENTS

CURRENT AND UPCOMING PRODUCfiONS

, As part of the Goodwill Games in Seattle, the Moscow "Sov-remennik" Theatre will be performing two plays, Chekov's Three Sisters (June 29-July 22) at the Intiman Theatre, and Krotoi Marshkut (The Steep Route) by Aleksandr Getman, based on Eugenia Ginsburg's Into The Whirlwind (July 25-August 5) at the Bagley Wright Theatre. This production features a cast of 5 men and 55 women. Both productions are directed by Galina Volchek.

The Seattle performances will not be the only opportunity to see the "Sovremennik" in the United States. They will also present Kmtoi Marshkut at the New York International Festival in June 1991, and at George Mason University's new Theatre of the First Amendment where Ginsburg's son, Vassily Aksyonov is a writer in residence.

Also at the Goodwill Arts Festival, The Empty Space Theatre will be presenting a series of rehearsed readings of newly commissioned translations of three Soviet plays: Paul Schmidt's translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bathhouse; Oleg Anotonov's Egorushka, translated by Elise Thoron, and Michael Heim's translation of Alek-sander Buravsky's The Body Shop. The readings will be on Sundays and Mondays from July 15 until July 30.

A one-man show by Andrew Harris, Rapping with Repin, with David Coffee, about the 19th century painter, Tiya Repin, will be pre-sented at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of an exhibition on the "Wanderers" of 19th century Russian realist art. The play will also be performed in Dallas and Fort Worth schools during October and N evember 1990.

A Light From the East, which had a workshop performance in March, 1990, will be given a full production at the La Mama E.T.C. from November 23 to December 10, 1990. The production conceived and directed by Virlana Tkacz is based. on the experiences of Les Kurbas, innovative Ukranian director of the 1920s. It uses the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and Pavlo Tychyna, selections from Kurbas' diary and memoirs of his actors. It will be presented in English and Ukrainian by the Y ara Arts Group, a new group that sponsors perform-ing arts events with a special focus on the East.

The Moscow Experimental Theatre-Studio, under the direction of Vyacheslav Spesivtsev, is attempting to present a dramatization of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The production which was developed

6 Soviet and East European Performance Vol.lO, No.2

without Solzhenitsyn's consent is currently being performed for invited audiences at "rehearsals", in the hope that the author will eventually agree to public performances.

NOTES OF PAST PRODUCfiONS

The John Houseman Studio Theatre in New York presented a pair of one-acts collectively titled "By and For Havel" that opened March 8. The plays were Vaclav Havel's Audience in a production that was staged in Prague in January and Catastrophe by Samuel Beckett, which was dedicated to Havel and inspired by his imprisonment. The production was directed by Vasek Simek.

The Circle in the Square presented Mikhail Bulgakov's Zoya's Apartment, directed by Boris A. Morozov, resident director of the Maly Theatre in Moscow. The American premiere of Zoya'a Apartment took place in 1978 at the Gene Frankel Workshop Theatre, directed by Earl Ostroff. In a review of this production by the New York Times, Richard Eder said, "If the production does not do full justice to the work, it does it the essential justice of conveying its excitement. Mr. Ostrow has dis-covered "Zoya" for us, and that is a lot."

Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky's only opera produc-tion, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov for The Royal Opera, was presented at the Kirov Opera in Leningrad in the first joint production of the Kirov and Royal Operas. Tarkovsky was recently awarded the Lenin Medal posthumously.

Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle directed by Slobodan Unkovski opened May 11 at the American Repertory Theatre in Cam-bridge, Massachusetts. Also at ART, Andrei Serban directed The King Stag by Carlo Gozzi in a translation by Albert Bermel. It ran from May 15 to June 10.

From April16-May 6 the Vakhtangov Theatre Company pre-sented Mikhail Shatrov's docudrama The Peace of Brest-Litovsk, directed by Robert Sturua, at the Civic Center for Performing Arts in Chicago.

The State Youth Theatre of Lithuania presented The Square, a vivid tale of a love affair that is stronger than the jackboots of a repres-sive society, and Chingiz Aitmatov's A Day Lasting Longer Than A Century, both directed by Eimuntas Nekro~ius at the International Theatre Festival of Chicago. Performances ran from June 28 to July 1.

Also at the International Theatre Festival of Chicago was the

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Katona J6zsef Theatre from Hungary, making its U. S. debut with Nikolai Gogol's farce, The Government Inspector. The performances were from June 18-26 at the Blackstone Theatre.

FILM As part of its recent New Directors/New Films series, the

Musuem of Modern Art presented the winner of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival Camera D'Or (best debut film) My 20th Century, directed by Ildik6 Enyedi of Hungary, and it also showed Bogdan Dziworski's short film A Few Stories About a Man.

At the Cannes Film Festival this year, the Polish actress, Krystyna Janda was voted best actress for her performance as a prisoner in The Inte"ogation, recently released but held up by the censors since it was made in the early 1980s. Soviet director Pavel Lungin won best director for his first film, Taxi Blues, while the Camera D'Or was given to Vitaly Kanevsky's popular Soviet film Don't Move, Die or Come Back to Life. A lower-level jury prize was also given to The Mother, Soviet director Gleb Panfilov's epic film about the rise of Communism. Polish director Andrezj Wajda's film Korczak, set during World War II, about an orphanage filled with Jewish children and the man who took care of them, while not in competition was given a commendation by the prize jUry.

The 4th American Film Institute Los Angeles Film Festival, which ran from April 19 to May 3 had as its centerpiece,"Hollywood Glasnost," a group of 47 movies from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, with more than a dozen of them making their American premieres. Among the films shown were Zero City, by Soviet director Karen Shakhnazarov, Hungarian director Gyula Gazdag's Standoff and Czech director Jiri Menzel's Larks on a String.

CONFERENCES, LECTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS

The University of Washington announced its summer program, Preparing the Acting Teacher: East European Theatre from July 16 through July 27, 1990. The faculty will include Joachim Tenschert, Intendant of the Berliner Ensemble, Oleg Tabakov of the Mosxow Art Theatre, and Igor Kvasha of the "Sovremennik" Theatre of Moscow.

As part of their exhibition Russian Painting 1965-1990: The Quest for Self-Expression, on October 12 and 13, 1990, the Columbus Museum of Art, in conjunction with The Ohio State University, will host a symposium to provide students and a general audience with an over-view of the state of the arts in the Soviet Union, as developed over the last twenty-five years. Keynote addresses will be by Dr. Frederick Starr

8 Soviet and East European Performance VoJ.lO, No.2

of Oberlin College and Dr. Maria Carlson of the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Other speakers include Dr. Vassily Aksyonov, Dr. Anna Lawton, Dr. Alma Law and Anna Kisselgoff.

The University of Ottawa Department of Modern Languages and Literatures is sponsoring a symposium entitled, "Slavic Drama: The Question of Innovation" from May 1-4, 1991. For information write to Professor Andrew Donskov, Department of Modern Languages and Lit-eratures, University of Ottawa, 550 Cumberland, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5 (613) 564-6529.

New York University held an Eastern Comparative Literature Conference on May 5. The topic was, "Culture 'As Ir: Literature and Politics in Central Europe."

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography (LGITMiK) has announced a program enabling for-eign students to receive an education in the following areas of con-centration: acting, puppet theatre (both 4-year programs), directing, scenic design, and the theory and history of theatre (teatrovedenie) (all three 5-year programs). A knowledge of Russian is obligatory.

Tuition and housing are $2,500 per year. The academic year begins September 1. The Institute also offers a four-month preliminary course (Russian language and the basics of the chosen concentration), beginning February 1, at a fee of $1,250. Applications and requests for further information should be addressed to: Prof. V. Ivanov, Dean for Foreign Relations, 34 Mokhovaya Street, 191028 Leningrad, U .S.S.R.

Beginning in January 1990, the R.S.F.S.R Union of Theatre Workers is publishing a new monthly magazine entitled Plotlines (Syuz-hety). Each issue will contain two or three new plays along with a brief description of each.

According to Aleksandr Gelman, prominent playwright and secretary of the R.S.F.S.R. Union of Theatre Workers, P/otlines is dedi-cated to helping young new playwrights. "We will try to publish original and unusual plays in an effort to open the way to experimental forms of dramaturgy. One of the objectives of our publication is to acquaint theatres with the new dramaturgy--to give impetus to creative innova-tion and to encourage unexpected bold concepts. It seems to us that the times are ripe for such an undertaking."

Additional information on the monthly, Plotlines, can be obtained by writing to the Department of Dramaturgy, R.S.F.S.R. Union of Theatre Workers, Gorky St. 16/2, Moscow 103009, U.S.S.R.

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REPORT ON KAZIMIERZ BRAUN

The Polish director, author and theatre historian Kazimierz Braun has been working in the United States since 1985. Because of his involvement with Solidarity and his opposition to the military government of Jaurzelski, in 1984 he was dismissed from his position as manager and director of the Contemporary Theatre in Wroctaw and not allowed to continue as a professor at the University of Wroctaw.

Braun has lectured at many American universities. Since 1987, he has served as Professor and Head of the Acting Program at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo. He has been a visiting direc-tor at a number of theatres, staging Ionesco's Rhinoceros at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Witkiewicz's Shoemakers at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, and Roiewicz's The Hunger Artist Departs in Buffalo. Most recently he directed two productions in Ireland: in Celtic, Bullai Mhartain, a dramatization of Irish short stories, and in English, Braun's own play, The Immigrant, about the Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska, starring Teresa Sawicka from Poland.

Braun has continued his work as a scholar and theatre his-torian. His novel Pomnik (The Monument) has just been published in Paris. As the political situation has evolved in Poland, so has Braun's status. In the spring of 1989 his play about Modjeska, under the title Pani Helena, was given at the Stary Theatre in Cracow, directed by Jan Maciejowski and starring Anna Polony. At the end of 1989, the new Ministry of Culture and Art offered Braun the position of manager and artistic director of the Teatr Polski in Wrocraw, the city's largest theatre. The entire Polish theatre is in a state of transition. New principles affecting the organizational and financial operation of the theatre are being put into effect. There has been a decrease in the number of spec-tators as a result of the rising cost of tickets. Unemployment among actors has increased. Yet theatre continues to occupy an essential place in society.

Braun has declined the offer to undertake the management of the Teatr Polski. Given the present status of his own work, he is more interested in directing, writing and teaching. Therefore he has decided to remain as a professor at SUNY, Buffalo. But he will return to Poland as a guest director from time to time. He plans to direct his own adaptation of Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel Miazga (The Pulp) in 1991 at the Teatr Polski. He will also direct Orwell's Animal Farm at the University of Buffalo. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Braun is presently writing The History of the Polish Theatre after 1944.

10 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No.2

/ ,; .. ARPADGONCZ

ELECTED INTERIM PRESIDENT OF HUNGARY

kpad Goncz, the new interim President of Hungary was born in 1922 in Budapest, where he studied law, receiving his Doctor of Laws degree in 1944. During this period, he was a member of the Hungarian underground and was wounded by German troops in 1944. After the war, Goncz was a lawyer in an agricultural bank in Budapest and managing editor of the Smallholders Party youth weekly. The Inde-pendent Smallholders Party was a left-center oppposition party which won the last free elections in Hungary in 1945.

After the Communist takeover, Goncz became a pipefitter and returned to college at Godoll6 University of Agricultural Engineering where he studied soil reclamation until the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the rebellion, Goncz taught himself English in prison and translated the speeches of John F. Kennedy for the Ministry of the Interior. At the same time, he began translating John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, smuggling it out of prison. Released in the general amnesty of 1%3, Goncz worked as a free-lance writer and translator. Among the authors he has translated are: E. L. Doctorow, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, William Stryon, John Updike, Edith Wharton and Thomas Wolfe.

Mr. Goncz resumed his political work as president of the National Writers' Association, president of Hungarian PEN, vice-president of the Hungarian section of the International League for Human Rights. He was also a founding member and vice president of the Alliance of Free Democrats, a left-center social party founded in 1987. On May 2, 1990, the new Hungarian Parliament elected Mr. Goncz the interim president.

Mr. Goncz, winner of the J6zsef Attila Literary Prize and the Wheatland Prize, has published five plays, as well as a novel and numerous short stories. His most successful play is Magyar Medeia (A Hungarian Medea) (1978) which has been performed in Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. as well as Hungary. His other plays are: Racsok (Iron Bars), 1978; Sarusok (Men of God), 1978, and Pesszimista Komedia (A Pessimistic Comedy), 1989. He has also written two radio plays: Perszephone (Per-sephone), 1989 and Mer/eg (Balance), 1989.

English translations of A Hungarian }fedea and Iron Bars are available in Voices of Dissent: Two Plays of Arpad Goncz, translated by Katherina M . Wilson and Christopher C. Wilson, published by Associ-ated Universities Pressej. In July, Garland Press will bring out Plays and Other Writings of Arpad Goncz, also translated by Katherina M. Wilson and Christopher C. Wilson.

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HUNG~PLA~GHTATTACKED

According to a press release issued by the New York based Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, the prominent Hungarian writer Andras Stito was attacked on March 19 by pitchfork-wielding ethnic Romanian nationalists during an anti-Hungarian pogrom in his hometown of Tirgu Mures (Hungarian: Marosvasarhely), Romania. Mr. Stit6, who has consistently advocated reconciliation among the vari-ous nationalities of Transylvania, was attending a meeting with approxi-mately 70 other members of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania at the organization's local office when it was besieged by an armed crowd of hundreds of anti-Hungarian attackers.

As a result of the beating he received, Mr. Stito suffered a detached retina and an internal cut in his left eye. He underwent eye surgery on April 3, at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston.

Transylvania, which had been under Hungarian sovereignty since the tenth century, was transferred to Romania by the peace treaty of World War I in 1920. As a consequence, over two million ethnic Hungarians now live in Romania. The Ceau~escu regime's brutal repression of Hungarian identity in Transylvania took a severe toll on the region's Hungarian schools and other cultural institutions, on the public use of the Hungarian language, and on the ethnic compactness of Hungarian settlements such as Tirgu Mures. Many Romanians came to regard the Hungarian presence in the country as a threat to Romanian national unity and purity. Thus the pogrom of March 19 grew out of hostility toward ethnic-Hungarian strivings for restoration of linguistic rights and cultural autonomy.

In an interview with Hungarian television in Budapest after the attack, Mr. Stito described the scene:

"We tried our best to hide the fact that we were up in the attic. We decided not even to show our faces at the window for whenever someone in the crowd outside got even a glimpse of us, he immediately cried out: 'There they are! Bring them out so we can hang them!' We were caught totally by surprise by this screaming, frenzied mob of Romanians, entirely beside themselves with rage, demanding our blood and our deaths. Some of them were from Tirgu Mures; some were from the countryside, especially Romanian peasants bused in from the Gorgeny Valley, who armed themselves with pitchforks, slashing and cutting weapons, and chains, which they obviously intended to use on someone. As it turned out, they used them on us . . . "

Despite several calls for assistance, army officers did not respond for about five hours. Soldiers then led the first four of the cornered victims out of the building and into an uncovered army truck, but failed to protect them from being attacked by the screaming mob.

Andras StitO, regarded as the leading Hungarian writer living


outside of Hungary, was born into a Transylvanian peasant family in 1927. By the early 1950s, his dramatic and poignant stories about peasant life had established him as an important literary stylist. In 1970, he won critical acclaim and wide popular attention for his highly original novel, My Mother Promises Untroubled Sleep. In the 1970s he estab-lished himself as a major Hungarian playwright with The Palm Sunday of a Horse Dealer (1974), Star at the Stake (1975) and Cain and Abel (1977), dramas that examine the confrontation of the individual with the identity-threatening forces of arbitrary authority. Mr. Siit8's dramatic subjects, which are often historical or mythological, convey the playwright's concern for communal survival and spiritual self-preservation.

In Hungary, Mr. Siit5's works have always enjoyed frequent exposure in print and on the stage. In Romania by contrast, during the last decade of its rule, the Cealliescu regime imposed a total ban on his works. Although he was subjected to increasing harassment, he chose to stay in Transylvania and confront the hostility of the Ceau~escu regime. On November 9, 1989, Mr. Siita' was placed under house arrest where he remained until the revolution the following month. The tragic irony of his fate in the post-Ceauescu era is, therefore, all the more poignant.

NOTE

Two of AndrAs Siit~s plays are available in English translation: Star at the Stake in Modem International Drama, Vol. 13, No. 2,

(State University of New York at Binghamton: Max Reinhardt Archive, Spring 1980).

The Palm Sunday of a Horse Dealer will appear in the upcom-ing anthology Drama Contemporary: Hungary (New York: P AJ Pub-lications, 1980).

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Growing Up with Baby Arlekin Puppet Theatre, Lodz, Poland


THE POLISH PUPPET THEATRE: A REPORT FROM THE UNIMA CONFERENCE

Jane McMahan

"The Language of the Puppet," a conference co-sponsored by UNIMA USA (the American Center for the Union Internationale de la Marionette) and the Tears of Joy Puppet Theatre, took place on May 2-5, 1990, in Vancouver, Washington. Scholars, directors and puppeteers from around the world presented papers, participated in panel discus-sions and viewed performances by companies from Japan, Finland, the United States, the Soviet Union and Poland.

Among the speakers were Henryk Jurkowski, president of UNIMA, noted author on puppet theatre, and professor at the Higher School of Drama at Warsaw and Bialystok; Jan Wilkowski, actor, playwright, director and professor at Warsaw's State Higher Academy of Theatre; and Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz, director and playwright at the puppet theatre Arlekin of wdz (Poland).

The performing groups included the Moscow Shadow Puppet Theatre, the Kiev State Puppet Theatre, and Arlekin. By far the most involving performance for both adults and children was Arlekin's "Co z tego wyrosnie" (Growing up with Baby), performed in English transla-tion.

The play is a composite of sequences in the life of a theatre couple, Arlekin an Arlekina, confronting the experience of a new baby. Their reactions, trials and fantasies are presented in a touching, humorous and at times dramatic way, as they search for meaning and understanding. The stylistic mode is a fluid interchange of mime, vari-ous forms of puppetry and straight, spoken acting.

At first, Arlekin and Arlekina enact a playful mime episode leading to the conception of a baby. The mood is playful and gentle. Arlekina seductively winds a snake-like ribbon around her wrist. Her hands gracefully shape a heart. Baby cries emerge from a large (preg-nant) drum. In spite of the preliminaries, the advent of the child is per-ceived by the couple as a shock, and they are unprepared for the con-sequences. But soon, Arlekina is holding her new son lovingly in her arms (likened in the text to "the wings of a bird"), and Arlekin is dither-ing about.

A cradle is evoked by a bunched-up draping of cloth high on the center of the backdrop, an open triptych. On either side is projected a larger-than-life photographic portrait of the actors. They are Jerzy Stasiewicz and Joanna Ignaciuk, who themselves form a couple and have provided much of the material for this play from their own experience. Both actors give an honest and evocative performance. Ms. Ignaciuk's singing voice is particularly appealing and Mr. Stasiewicz's buffoonery is neatly timed. However, a more tightly structured pantomime style

15

would have given the piece a more forceful beginning. The child puppet, a stuffed cloth form, is well-designed to

articulate life-like motions. It is manipulated not only by Arlekin and Arlekina but also from behind the screen by a hidden actress, Liliana Ochma6ska, who does the baby vocalizations with complete authenticity and a wide range of vocal expression. The fact that this infant moves around without strings or any other visible devices, seems to underline his overwhelming independence, already achieved.

In an effort to stem the endless crying, the parents try to amuse their son with a mock bullfight. An allusion is being made here to more traditional Polish puppet theatre, in which Joseph clowns around with animals in the manger. Total frustration is evident in the more con-temporary reaction of Arlekina as she repeatedly tosses the baby in the air while Arlekin luckily catches him.

This section becomes sheer slapstick: the couple tries to feed the baby a string of frankfurters before stuffing a bottle in his mouth, and Arlekin blindfolds himself with a diaper before they are most graphically peed on. Exhausted, Arlekin says, "He's far from being a real man. Am I far from being a real man? How far?" Arlekina crypti-cally answers: "A meter of time."

The words of the text come as occasional droplets, falling among exclamations and silences, sometimes in short phrases or in simple, stream of consciousness style with the audience expected to make the associations and connections. The director and author, Wiec-zorkiewicz, has taken much of his material from the writings of the poet Krystyna Mifob~dzka.

In the next section, the text and indeed the whole mood changes. Using ingeniously devised cloth marionettes on a miniature set improvised with oversized books and a clothesline of diapers, our com-media protagonists now enact three action-packed scenes from the worrisome, projected future of their child. They imagine him first as Faust, then as Don Juan and finally as Don Quixote. The dialogue for this section is composed of fragments from traditional Czech puppet plays and Evgeny Shvart's Don Quixote delivered in exaggerated parody form. An indistinct red shadow figure and a shadow butterfly argue Faust's fate. Still manipulated in full view by Arlekin and Arlekina, the puppets enact a courtship, love triangle and duel. Sword gestures are timed to coincide with chords as music from Don Giovanni and Man of La Mancha blares in the background and shadow images streak across the screen. Diabolical laughter and scary shadow hands accompany the moralistic voice from above.

The play returns to its original simplicity as Arlekin and Arlekina, hearts beating in trepidation, give their child a loving send-off to fmd his own way.

I was fortunate to be able to speak with Wojciech Wiec-zorkiewicz immediately after the performance. He communicated with


the same finesse, charm and directness that is evident in his artistic work. He explained that the play "is constructed on the principle of commedia dell'arte to provoke the actors to improvise and introduce new ideas. The performance is based on the idea of permanent change."

In the panel discussion on "Directing the Puppet Stage," Wiec-zorkiewicz outlined the changing role of director during his forty years of work in theatre. In the 1950s the director was virtual dictator and the actor-puppeteers were called "puppet carriers." In the 1960s, everyone became involved. This led to the "theatre of the liberated actor" of the 1970s and changed concepts of "styles, space, partnership." "This is why the puppeteer is now visible, the word 'actor' is used more, and space is changed to an open stage." In the 1980s, what has become important is "the expression of the actor's concept" with the director helping "like an obstetrician. . . to liberate the unconscious." Wieczorkiewicz described his own role not only as "guardian of the puppet, but of the actor as well. I work to assure the actor a feeling of security, to care for the whole person. I am an instrument working on an instrument working on an instrument."

When I asked him how important it had been for him to pre-sent traditional Polish theatre, Wieczorkiewicz answered: "There was a time in my life when I both wanted to and was obliged to do Polish theatre. Now I think it is most important to come close to children's minds with human values, not Polish values, but general human values." When asked if he saw this as the function of the new freedom, he ans-wered, "I think that the Polish theatre has been talking about general human values for many years, and the changes that have happened in Poland are a result of this."

Asked if he had been hampered by politics, Wieczorkiewicz replied, "Never hampered, but I wasted part of my life when I wanted to do political theatre. Now I think politics in puppet theatre has no mean-ing. . . . A theatre used for propaganda has little in common with real art." He sees the future of art in a liberalized Poland as "a process within a process." Asked if the new era of freedom came as a shock, he said, "No. We take it for granted. We deserve it. We look at the Czechs dancing in the streets with surprise. For us, it was our will that was realized."

Wieczorkiewicz is optimistic about the future of puppet theatre in Poland, in spite of the inevitable diminished subsidies and the dangers of commercialization. "You will see Polish artists using dif-ferent forms of expression, meanings, ideas, values to their fullest."

As to his own work, the director sees his future mostly in terms of his students. 'This is a difficult question for someone who has a past and is not sure about the future. I have been working for forty years in theatre." When probed further, he said, "I'll tell you a secret. There will be a continuation to this very story: how Arlekin and Arlekina build a

17

home--not a house, but a home for themselves as a family." I also talked with Jan Wilkowski, whose work in puppet theatre

has had an enormous impact both on the stage and on television. He is described by his daughter Kaja Perkowski, who served as interpreter for the interview, as the "grandpa of Polish TV puppet theatre," akin to Mr. Rogers in this country in popularity. Although the creative conditions were "very comfortable," Wilkowski says he left television because "the censors blocked our work," requiring that it be "very patriotic." "Now all that is changed, but the times in which we live are very hard. We have freedom now, but we will have to pay for it with economic poverty. We have to rebuild all the structures destroyed in 1939. The actors and theatres are rebuilding Polish art. Puppet theatre was big and rich. Now there will be smaller companies of two or three people. This will correspond better with our economic situation, but the period of transi-tion will be very difficult.''

In his conference presentation, Wilkowski stressed that "it becomes a problem if the use of words destroys the true elements of puppetry: the juxtaposition of shape and movement. Acknowledging the double language of the puppet implies avoiding rich but clumsy writ-ten drama that does not offer intensive action for the puppet. Each art has its limitations and conventions. Puppet theatre loses its meaning when word dictates action. We must split them so they can work polyphonically, with words and gestures meeting contrapuntally from time to time."

This coming year Wilkowski is certain to have an impact on American puppet theatre. He will be living in Oregon and will be guest director at the Tears of Joy Puppet Theatre, a company of seven actors directed by Reg Bradley based in Vancouver, Washington. He sees his contribution as, "sharing my knowledge and my own experience. Not that it's better, but different. I would like to encourage a more dramatic theatre. Many American theatres have too much show and entertain-ment. This is completely different from the Polish theatre. We have no entertainment," he said with a smile.

Wilkowski will be directingA/addin and his Lamp at Tears of Joy as a gift for his grandson, who lives in this country. This, he says will be his last production. At 70 (a fact that he mentions significantly, as though to make some sense out of it for himself), Jan Wilkowski seems outrageously young, bristling with uncontainable creative energy and innovative ideas. It is unthinkable that this could be his last perform-ance.

In a conversation with Dr. Henryk Jurkowski, who is currently working on an English translation of his three-volume history of puppet theatre, he spoke of puppetry in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as an art of enormous importance within the official state-controlled system of culture. "In the Soviet Union you have 120 puppet theatres; in Poland 27; in Czechoslovakia 20; and in the German Democratic

19

Republic, 17. They are all state theatres. What does this mean? Each has its own building, its own auditorium, its own administrative staff. The average puppet theatre in Poland has 60 to 80 employees. Of course there was censorship, but in the end they were able to develop quite freely."

I asked him to comment on the Arlekin performance. Was there anything about it that he found to be distinctly Polish in its sources?

"In Europe we have accepted commedia dell'arte. I wouldn't say that there is something typically Polish in the material. It is the thinking that is Polish--combining tradition with contemporary observa-tions of life. Wieczorkiewicz asks us about the future of all of us, espe-cially those who are young, and his answer, his anthropological answer, is to go back to archetypes. Don Giovanni and Don Quixote, they are the most popular European archetypes. In this respect, it is stylistically European, but Polish in its intellectual construction."

Asked what drew him to puppetry and what he considers to be the inherent artistic possibilities of the art form, Dr. Jurkowski theorized, "Puppetry can be an art of important intellectual content. It is less linked with the need for personal expression. The one who thinks, who feels, is more objective in his expression because he is speaking via objects, via props, via artificial items. It is just this that I most like in puppetry, this intersection of the ancient animistic object and contemporary intellectual concepts. Besides, puppetry is an art form that is open to the whole poetic experience. In the human theatre you have a kind of unity. When you see an actor, when you see one ele-ment, it is there to represent this element or a group of elements. But when you see two elements together, animate and inanimate juxtaposed, there is a chance of evoking new meaning. So I think that the puppet theatre--this mixing of different elements--is an art which holds great promise for the future."


CZECHOSLOVAK THEATRE DURING THE VELVET REVOLUTION

by

Olga F. Chtiguel

For Czechoslovak actors, the November rebellion against the Communist regime was an unprecedented event. In support of the stu-dents who had been beaten by police during a demonstration on November 17, 1989, actors, directors and technical crews walked onto the stages of their theatres and declared a strike. The theatre buildings, nonetheless, did not fall silent. On the contrary, the applause which resounded in theatres in Prague, Brno, Bratislava and the provinces will never be forgotten. It was theatre artists who awakened the nation from the nightmare of its history.

When the students commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Jan Opletal by the Nazis marched on National Avenue (Narodnf tlfda), they were greeted by the actors of The National Theatre (Narodni divadlo). The meeting had powerful historical resonances. In 1881, while under Austrian rule, the Czechs completed construction of the National Theatre where plays in the Czech language were to be performed. Due to circumstances never fully explained, the theatre caught fire and was severely damaged two months after its provisional opening. Within two years the theatre was rebuilt with money donated by the Czech people. Since that time, the National Theatre has been the pride of the nation in its struggle for self-determination.

Under the Communist regime, the National Theatre went through a series of ideological and artistic upheavals which affected the style of its three ensembles: drama, ballet and opera. Withstanding pressures from the Ministry of Culture and the internal unit of the Communist Party in the theatre, Milan Luke~, head of the drama ensemble, sought to create artistically and intellectually valid produc-tions. As a consequence, he and a few outstanding actors, including Jana Hlava

breathtaking. Defying the stubborn refusal of the director, Ji1i Pauer, to open the buildings of the National Theatre, the actors, opera singers,

dam~ers and technical crews organized opposition rallies on the street in front of the theatre buildings.

Shortly after passing the historic National Theatre building, the demonstrators were brutally attacked by the police. Angered by these terrifying events, the students of the Theatre Academy of the Arts (Divadeln1 Akademie Mmiclcych Umtm') headed from National Avenue

directly to the Theatre of Realism (Realisticke divadlo). Their bloodied faces and torn clothing were in stark contrast to the festive atmosphere of the opening night of Mary'Ja, a Czech classic. The students then went back to their schools. By the next morning, they had transformed it into student strike headquarters and had written a short declaration, includ-ing a demand for an investigation of the police action and a call for a general strike on November 27, 1989.

In another part of Prague, in an auditorium named the Junior Club on Hop-Garden (Junior klub Na Chmelnici), two theatres from Brno--the Theatre on a String (Divadlo na provazku) and the Theatre of Hana (Hanacke divadlo)--were performing Rozrazil (Veronica) . This collaborative performance, called a "stage journal," was conceived as a protest against the oppressive regime and a call for democratic political changes. A student from Brno, beaten in the demonstration on National Avenue, came to the Junior Club that evening. In a powerful fusion of life and art, he was immediately included in the second part of the performance so that he could share his experiences with the hor-rified audience.

The following day, theatre artists from both mainstream and off-mainstream theatres gathered at the Theatre of Realism to for-mulate their response to the events of the previous night. Arno!t Gold-flam, director of Ha-Theatre, and Petr Oslzlf, dramaturg of Theatre on a String, were the first artists to declare a strike in their theatres. Gold-flam recalled in an interview for BBC, "There was a rather simple, yet very intense, reaction from one participant that for forty years we have performed like idiots. If we do not react today, then we will perform like idiots for another forty years".l The session concluded with

"Prohla~eni leskych divadelnikt\" ("The Declaration of Czech Theatre Artists"), calling for a theatre strike and support of the students' demands. In the afternoon, Milan Mejstlik, a student from the Theatre Academy, announced in Wenceslas Square that the actors and students were on strike. The Velvet Revolution was born.

The following day, on November 19, at the Drama Club (~inoherni Studio), a group of intellectuals headed by Vaclav Havel organized Civic Forum (Ob~anske f6rum). In the intimate space of the Drama Club, Grossman and Havel, as well as Ladislav Smo~ek, J aroslav V ostry and Jan Ka~er, sought to appeal to the civic consciousness of Czech citizens. In the 1960s, the repertory of both theatres included


classics, modern Western plays of topical relevance and contemporary Czech drama explicitly criticizing the neo-Stalinist regime in Czechos-lovakia.

After the Soviet invasion of 1968, the artistic and intellectual standards of both theatres deteriorated as a result of ideological purges. Only with the arrival of Evald Schorm, a director banned from the filin studios, did the Balustrade re-emerge as a politically engaged theatre of high artistic standards. Smolek tried to revive the Drama Club despite the fact that Vostry and Ka~er were forced to work in the provinces. After years of subordination to bizarre censorship by the Ministry of the Interior, it came as no surprise that the ensembles of both theatres immediate?' joined the opposition. During the first days of the revolu-tion, Oslzly of the Theatre on a String, Jifi Bartotka of the Balustrade, and Jil'i ~epek of the Drama Club emerged as leading figures in Civic Forum. On Monday night, all Prague theatres except the National Theatre opened their doors for public discussions. People who had never attended a performance now eagerly stood in long lines in freez-ing temperatures. Hundreds who could not get into the theatres remained on the streets or in the lobbies in order to listen to the per-formances and discussions through loudspeakers. Workers, students, farmers, economists, journalists and priests shared the stages with the artists in creating history. Stormy applause and happy laughter repeatedly exploded in the auditoriums and on the stages of Czechos-lovak theatres.

Throughout these revolutionary days, theatres were turned into political tribunes where, after years of repression, spectators and actors now freely expressed their hope and fears. In semi-improvised evenings, actors conducted interviews and discussions with guests and spectators. Some of these were broadcast by the newly-liberated television network. In a program called Dialogue, the members of Studio Ypsilon appeared together with Vlra ~aslavska, a gymnastic star of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City (subsequently an adviser to Havel and proposed ambassador to Japan) and Vaclav Klaus, an economist (subsequently Finance Minister in the new government).

In the Theatre on the Vineyards (Divadlo na Vinohradech), as _in other theatres, actors gathered onstage and recited short poems and proverbs, performed short excerpts from plays and even read from Marx's writings. Between the performances and songs (presented on a set designed for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita) the actors carried on a discussion with invited experts, Civic Forum members and journal-ists. At the Balustrade, one evening was devoted to a meeting with Jan Trefulka, LudvHc Vaculik, Ivan Klima and Milan Jungman, all writers banned after the 1968 invasion. Another evening, the spectators greeted Pavel Landovskf, an actor of the Drama Club, who had lived in Vienna for the past ten years. A signatory of Charter 77, LandovsicY had been stripped of his citizenship and prevented from returning home after a

23

two-year engagement at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The Theatre of Ji~l Wolker (Divadlo JiYiho Wolkera), whose

repertory is oriented toward a young audience, prepared a series called What Is Not in Textbooks. These semi-educational performances con-sisted of discussions for high school students with invited experts on law, sociology, ecology, aesthetics, philosophy, psychology, political science and history. The Theatre of Realism also scheduled mid-day perform-ances for discussions with high school students.

V aclav Havel sometimes appeared at the theatres, at least for a few moments, to greet spectators and answer their questions. During his short talk at the first discussion evening at the National Theatre, he quipped, "I apologize for not wearing appropriate attire for attendance at a theatre, but I did not know I would be here .. . I am glad, however, that I am slowly moving from the squares toward the theatre". Whether on the stage of his "domestic" Balustrade or at the National Theatre, Havel always expressed pride in his fellow theatre artists. He reminded spectators that the role of actors in Czech history goes back at least to the beginning of the 19th century when travelling companies revived the Czech language in the heavily Germanized country. Talking about Civic Forum's activities, Havel joked, "Suddenly the media works so perfectly that it often knows something even before I do."

At one theatre, however, the spectators did not come to listen to the actors. The spectators were both foreign and Czech journalists who hoped to learn about the rapidly changing situation from the mem-bers of the coordinating committee of Civic Forum. Civic Forum's headquarters was established at the Magic Lantern (Laterna magika), whose celebrated founder, Alfred Radok, had been a repeated victim of political changes in Czechoslovakia. As a radical experimenter after World War II, Radok fell into disgrace during the years of Socialist Realism. His short-lived fame during the 1960s came to a sudden end after the Soviet invasion in 1968. Radok emigrated to Sweden where he died in 1976.2 Except for a few moments of former glory, the once innovative Magic Lantern degenerated into a tourist attraction. In 1989, the theatre, literally overnight, gained a world-wide audience. The his-tory of Czechoslovakia was "performed" amidst the set for Diirenmatt's Minotaurus. 3

In reaction to the controlled media's false reports about events in Prague, actors and students began their trips to factories and cooperative farms on November 20. The Communist regime had for years "bribed" actors with high salaries to perform in the state-owned television network and film studios. In an ironic twist of fate, these same actors now turned into revolutionaries. The nation, long con-demned to a television culture of feeble-minded soap operas, was awakened from its agony by the very practitioners of the official culture. Television "characters" stepped out of the television screens and appeared in the yards of the factories to convince workers that every-


thing they had seen on the screen was a lie. The government feared the actors' influence on the workers.

On December 1, at the Congress of the Agricultural Cooperatives, the Communist Party distributed brochures to the participants listing the salaries of prominent actors. Despite the government's efforts to dis-credit the aristic community, demonstrators shouted in unison, "Long live the actors!" As they listened on Wenceslas Square or to their radios and television sets, the people gave their trust to Havel, the playwright, and Miroslav Macha~ek, the harassed director of the National Theatre, who became the spokesman for all theatre artists.

In Brno, the Moravian capital, the opposition was immediately strengthened by the activities of the Ha-Theatre and the Theatre on a String after they returned from Prague. Subsequently, the State Theatre (Statnf divadlo) opened its doors to public discussions. At the Maben's Theatre (Mahenovo divadlo), the spectators met with Milo~ Hy~, a leading Brno theatre artist in the 1960s. Like many of his colleagues,

Hyn~'t, a director and professor, had been forcefully silenced for the twenty years. In Slovakia, Milan Kna~ko, an actor at the National Theatre of Slovakia, organized the Public Against Violence (VeYejnost proti nasih'), a sister organization to Civic Forum. In other cities, too, theatre artists followed the example of their Prague colleagues. Because many of the theatre buildings were built on centrally located town squares, demonstrations naturally took place there. Indeed, as he travelled around the country, Havel, banned from the stage for two decades, delivered speech after speech inside and outside many theatre buildings.

After the final blow to the Communist regime, and the eleva-tion of Havel to the Presidency, many actors continued their political work. Oslzly and Kna:lko became Havel's close advisers; Magda

Va~aryova, an actress from the Slovak National Theatre, was designated ambassador to Austria. Luke!, who resigned from the National Theatre in protest over Pauer's decision, ~~s named Minister of Culture. Others, like Macha(ek, Barto~a and Cepek, returned to their theatres.

With censorship and blacklisting abolished, the Czech theatre is now free from the bonds of Marxism-Leninism. Theatre artists are now able to make their own intellectual and aesthetic choices. Still astonished by the swift changes, they are eagerly restructuring their repertories, ensembles and administrative structures. For a long time to come, theatre auditoriums will resound with echoes of the historic applause of those late November days of 1989.

25

NOTES

lTen Days, a BBC broadcast in the Czech language, also broad-cast by Civic Forum in its program on Czechoslovak Radio, Prague, December 11, 1989.

2Radok developed with Josef Svoboda, a renowned designer, the concept of the Magic Lantern from the ideas and practice of Miros-lav KouE'il, a designer, and E. F. Burian, an avant-garde director. Burian, himself a Communist, led the Czech avant-garde of the 1930s. After he returned from Dachau at the end of World War II, he actively participated in building socialist culture in the newly born Communist state. Shortly before his death Burian manifestly rejected Socialist Realism and returned to his pre-war concept of a poetic theatre.

3See Timothy Garton Ash, "The Revolution of the Magic Lantern" in The New York Times Review of Books, January 14, 1990.

26 Soviet and East European Performance Vol. 10, No. 2

COMPENSATION: A LITURGY OF FACT

Alma Law

"On April 26, 1986, at 1:24 a.m., massive explosions ripped through the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, one of the newest and most powerful nuclear power plants in the U.S.S.R. A ball of flame, accompanied by clouds of black smoke rose into the sky. The wind carried the deadly cloud, 10 times more radioactive than the atomic bomb dropped on H iroshima, to the northwest, sowing panic in the Soviet Union and Western Europe alike."1

Only now, four years later, is the Soviet government beginning to disclose fully the tragic scope of this nuclear disaster, both in terms of the size of the contaminated area and the number of people directly affected by Chernobyl's fallout, now estimated to be as many as 3 to 4 million, most of whom are still living in dangerously contaminated regions of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

For audiences who have attended performances of Compensa-tion since it opened a year ago in January 1989, at the Moscow Theatre-Studio "On the Boards" (Na doskakh ), these new revelations will come as no surprise. For this production, subtitled "A Liturgy of Fact," pre-sents in very human terms the terrible consequences of the nuclear dis-aster at Chernobyl. Contrary to the frequently-expressed opinion that political theatre is a dead issue in the Soviet Union now that glasnost allows virtually any subject to be aired in the press, this production--and the audience response to it --suggests that there is still plenty of room for an unflinching examination on the stage of important political and social questions.

Headed by Sergei Kurginyan, a self-styled wunderkind with degrees in math and physics as well as theatre, "On the Boards" has made a speciality of staging controversial productions that leave few audience members indifferent. Their program, aimed at what Kurginyan calls the "lumpen intelligentsia" proposes "silent meditation" between stage and auditorium in the context of "poor" theatre, seeing it as a counterbalance to the extravagant spectacle of the professional theatre. And to insure that he attracts a serious audience, Kurginyan refuses to sell is tickets through the theatre kiosks located around Mos-cow. If one wants to attend a performance one must go to the theatre itself, presently located in the club attached to the Moscow Con-servatory on Malaia Gruzinskaia Street near the zoo.

The performance of Compensation that is described in the fol-lowing account took place on March 4, 1989.

By 7:00p.m. curtain time, all seats in the auditorium are filled, extra chairs have been brought in, and there are people standing along the sides. Prior to the beginning of the performance, Sergei Kurginyan

27

Compensation Theatre "On the Boards," Moscow


speaks to the audience, explaining that the production is called "a liturgy of facts." He adds, "It's not so much about what happened at Chernobyl as what its meaning is." The performance runs for one hour and twenty minutes.

"There will then be a brief intermission," Kurginyan announces, "during which the audience members can watch a video documentary on Chernobyl out in the lobby. Following the intermission there will then be a discussion with the audience." He goes on to explain that Adolf Kharash, the psychologist whose material--interviews and rsychological studies--on Chernobyl forms the basis of the production, will be pre-sent for the discussion along with a journalist and a medical specialist on radiation sickness who examined the ftremen after they were brought to Moscow following the blaze at Chemobyl.

The cast consists of a Psychologist-narrator and five "liquidators" garbed in white from head to foot. The performance takes place on a starkly bare set. In the center is a table on which is lying one of the victims of Chernobyl. The floor is covered with shiny metallic discs which in the finale will be gathered up as part of the ritual. To one side is a doll, an "angel" with a candle, also dressed in white. The music for the performance is that of a church liturgy, its beauty providing a striking counterpoint to the stark horror of the facts presented.

The narrator begins speaking, setting the context for the liturgy by quoting from Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Walt Whitman. The man on the table rises up.

"April 26, 1986 .. . It was Saturday. No one knew anything ... " "When we heard the rumors about the accident, no one paid

any attention--ther~'d been rumors before. No one was even frightened. "

"The worst part was the total absence of information ... " "We kept waiting for some kind of announcement. But none

came . . . " In rapid vignettes one gradually comes to understand the

nightmare of average people not being informed, of not understanding the terrible consequences for them of the explosion that had occurred at 1:23 a.m. that morning at the Chemobyl nuclear power station.

"The streets were full of people. They were selling ice cream everywhere. I even bought and ate two bars . . . "

"We went to the beach. It was a warm day and the entire family lay in the sun."

A woman speaks, "My kitten acted strangely. It kept trying to hide."

"The children were checked and pronounced in good health. It was only in autumn that their hair began falling out."

"Some said to drink wine to drive out the radiation, but now it's hard to get wine ... " "Eat more carrots . . . " "Melons will provide 'living gl ' " ucose ....

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Question: "Will it happen again?" Answer: "The system remains as before." The figures in white lift the mirrored board from the table.

The white powder covering it falls like snow. One man wipes it clean and shows it to the audience.

"Forgotten people, we turned to God." "I don't believe in anything any more." "Give us help. We carried out our duties. Where's the social

justice?" "People who suffered radiation in the first days will receive as

compensation 40 rubles a month." There is no sickness, it's all radiation phobia." Husband: "If something happens to me, the State will help

you." Wife: "But I don't believe it." Narrator: "Some lost their Party membership because they

protested." The refugees from Chernobyl, rather than being met with

sympathy and help, were shunned. People shouted, "Let all the Chernobyl victims be crushed!" Victims who received new housing were told by their new neighbors, "We'll wait. In another year you'll all be dead and then the apartments will be ours!"

A banner hanging over the town: "Your life is in your hands." "Enough! Enough, I said!" After the intermission the radiation specialist is the first to

speak. "How much did Chernobyl cost?" someone asks. "150 billion rubles," he answers. He goes on to say that Chernobyl affected nearly half of Byeloru.ssia, in all, several million people. Worst of all, it's a region of young people.

"When Mikhail Sergeevich (Gorbachev) went to the Ukraine earlier this month, there was not a single medical question, no doctors were along, not even the Minister of Health."

"llin and Co. (Leonid Ilin--Vice-president of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Medical Sciences, the man who is regarded as the most responsible for the cover-up] are now trying to hold back Threshold (Porog), a film made about Chernobyl. It's time for glasnost."

"What about Moscow?" someone asks. "The radioactive cloud went to the west and north, bypassing

Moscow," the specialist answers. A woman in the audience asks, "Is it safe to have children?"

The specialist answers, "Such a nuclear catastrophe doesn't pass without effect. Mutations have already begun to appear. They will increase."

The specialist tells how "Ilin and Co." allowed the refugees from Chernobyl to take with them family photographs and whatever mementos they wanted, even though these things were radioactive.

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Soviet and East European Perfonnance Vol. 10, No.2

Thus the radioactivity spread by indirect means. He tells of one official coming to Moscow and of the clothes he was wearing being tested for radioactivity. They were contaminated and had to be destroyed. The official objected, "No, I'll take them to the dry cleaners." "I had to explain to him that those clothes would then touch and contaminate clo-thing belonging to other people, including children."

Someone asks about the hazards of atomic testing. The spe-cialist answers, "I'm not allowed to say."

Kharash takes the floor. He begins by addressing the question of radiation phobia observing that one of the main causes of it was the "factor of the unknown." He goes on to express his concern that it's also being used as a cover-up for social problems. "Many sacrificed their health in vain," he says. "One-fifth of the population stayed behind until June 5. They knew nothing of their fate."

By the time it's the journalist's turn to speak, the audience is totally engaged. Someone brings up the cover-up of the Cheliabinsk catastrophe. "It was only years later that the public began to learn the truth.3 If Chernobyl hadn't been discovered by Western monitoring sta-tions (and a big point is made of the fact that the West knew well before the Soviet people were told), would it also have been covered up?"

A man raises the question of the Crimean Atomic Plant. When the medical specialist explains that the Soviet experts have pronounced it safe and that now a committee of Western experts are to look at it, the response he gets is very heated. "Why should we trust the Western experts ... The West has their own political program .... How do we know that their answer isn't a way of sabotaging us?"

From this it's only a short step to questioning whether experts in general can be trusted. Someone quotes Einstein, "The history of science is one of experts' mistakes." "Can we trust what the government tells us?" another voice asks. A chorus of voices responds, "Shouldn't the people be the ones to decide?" One man shouts out, "Why don't they put an atomic plant on Red Square if they're so safe!''

Someone in the back of the room stands up and starts defend-ing atomic energy. Kurginyan asks him to identify himself. It turns out he's an engineer from the Atomic Energy Commission. (I'm told later that they've begun sending someone to each performance to defend their position.) A wave of laughter runs through the audience. The spe-cialist jumps up and asks, "Why did six firemen die? Because the cement burned! That was your responsibility!" Again the question of inviting foreign experts comes up.

Kurginyan leaps in. He gets very excited and at one point calls the A.E.C. fellow "a coward," words he later apologizes for using. Kurginyan broadens the focus of the discussion by expressing his overall concern about middle-level bureaucrats, cautioning that as the level of competency drops, cruelty and indifference to human concerns will increase.

33

The audience is quiet as it walks out. For many, the evening has given them much to think about.

NOTES

1Pytor Mikhailov, "The Chemobyl Syndrome," Soviet Life, May 1990, p. 34.

2See the two-part article by Kharash: "Zagadochnyi sindrom, ill Chego boytsia chemobyl'tsy?" Nauka i religiia, No. 9, 1988, pp. 26-30; Nauka i religiia, No. 10, 1988, pp. 18-21.

Yrhis person probably had in mind the Urals nuclear disaster in autumn 1958 which occurred in the Chelyabinsk ob/ast. Reports of it first began turning up in the West within a year. But it was the account by exiled Soviet biochemist Zhores Medvedev in 1976 that really brought to the attention of the West the full scope of this catastrophe. By then, although information had still not been published in the Soviet press, according to Medvedev, "everybody in Russia knew about it." See James E. Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost, New York: Random House, 1988, pp. 211-228.


NEW LIFE FOR AN OLD IDEA: THE REAPPEARANCE OF MOSCOW'S BAT

by

John Freedman

Posters in Moscow advertising a new "performance-divertissement," The Reading of a New Play, state that, "The theater-cabaret Bat, which left Russia in the 1920s to shine in Paris and on Broadway in New York has reopened in Moscow after an intermission of 69 years." The performance, according to the posters, consists of "political satire; parodies, musical numbers, tragifarcical scenes, dance miniatures and circus sketches." It comprises seven scenes, plus a prologue and an epilogue that are loosely unified by the theme of an imagined reading of a play by the troupe of the original Bat on the eve of its departure for Europe in 1920.

Nikita Baliev founded the Bat in 1908 as an off-shoot of the Moscow Art Theatre. The Bat's performances grew out of that pecu-liarly Russian phenomenon of the kapustnik--a blend of parody, topical satire, song, improvisation and variety show--that originated as actor-initiated performances for the celebration of holidays. The perform-ance of a kapustnik is still the most common manner of marking notable dates in the Russian theatrical calendar.

During the 1980s, Grigory Gurvich, who studied directing under Maria Knebel at GITIS (State Institute of Theatre Arts), often staged kapustniki at the Union of Theatre Workers (STD),l and acquired a reputation as a talented interpreter of this traditional form.

One such performance took place at a New Year's Eve celebra-tion in 1984. "The hall was packed with stars," Gurvich told me recently. "Bella Akhmadulina, Mark Zakharov, Andrei Mironov, Oleg Tabakov, Bulat Okudzhava all attended. We were the only non-famous people there. We had set up a cabaret atmosphere with long tables stretching out from the stage, and we put on this kapustnik-parody. The effect was totally unexpected. Throughout the performance, these venerable members of the elite were continually shouting, whistling, and clamor-ing. Afterwards, Mark Zakharov approached me and said, "Listen, you ought to reopen the Bat."

Gurvich did not take the idea seriously at the time. Despite Zakharov's continued encouragement at chance meetings, he attempted to fmd a place for himself in the Moscow theatre world in more tradi-tional ways. He staged plays at the Yermolova Theatre, the Mayakovsky Theatre (performances were banned), and Konstantin Raikin's Satirikon, but none of these efforts brought him great satisfac-tion. More often than not, his temporary alliances lead to conflicts of artistic interest, and in 1988 he began to consider seriously the idea of

35

opening his own theatre. After researching the history and aesthetics of the Bat, Gurvich

became convinced that more than just a clever idea, the notion of re-opening the cabaret was supported by solid aesthetic principles as well. "When I learned that in addition to kapustnik-type shows and revues, Baliev put on Chekhov, Pushkin, Gogol and the like, I became intrigued. Style, after all, doesn't limit the freedom of art. The important thing is to find your own style. Baliev's audience trusted that his staging of, say, The Queen of Spades, would be unique."

Moreover, the principles which lay at the heart of Baliev's pro-ductions not only corresponded to Gurvich's own conceptions of theatre, but to the style of today as well: the huge influx of information and the rapid change that Soviet society is now undergoing have clear parallels to the situation that existed in Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and in the immediate post-revolutionary period.

Referring to Eisenstein's formula of the Montage of Attrac-tions, Gurvich notes that "when a society is inundated by information and itself begins to resemble a montage of attractions, this notion becomes very timely for its application to theatrical form. It is no coin-cidence that the two most popular television shows are Vzglyad (View) and Do i pos/e polunochi (Before and After Midnight). A tragic story about the Afghanistan war, a rock video, a meeting with a prostitute, a story about AIDS, music again--everything develops eclectically. It makes for engrossing viewing. I find that as soon as I've grasped the essence of a story, I want to get on to the next. If I can guess what they're up to, I get bored. Theatre has to be like that, too. You have to keep your audience guessing.

"When I was a student at Baku U Diversity in the late 1960s, I had the impression that I went into a lecture hall, fell asleep, and woke up five years later. Of course there were the occasional challenges, but the overall atmosphere was one of boring, frozen time. And that's how directors staged plays then: long, drawn-out and boring. The tempo of today makes a director's life far more difficult.

The reliance on small-form theatre in Russia--and later in the Soviet Union--on paradox, satire and topical themes, has often caused it to be unfairly accused of being light -weight in substance. In reality some of Russia's best actors--Vladimir Davydov, Vasily Kachalov, Igor Ilinsky--at one time or another worked in small-form theatres, while playwrights such as Nikolai Evreinov, Nikolai Erdman and Vladimir Mayakovsky used these theatres as workshops for their ideas. Gurvich's philosophy is very much centered in this tradition.

While he is unwilling to talk about the production he is now preparing, Gurvich said that in the future he would like to stage Twelfth Night. He sees in the aesthetics of the Renaissance a kind of general-ized theatricality which is close to his own concept of theatre. "Twelfth Night", Gurvich notes, "has never been staged in a way that enables an


audience to believe in the mystification that lies at its heart. ICs got to be staged so that nobody can figure out who any of the players are. Find a pair of twins or doubles to play Viola and Sebastian--! have in mind two sisters I want to invite for these roles. There are lots of things you can do like that. What a great thing it would be to stage Twelfth Night for the first time in history the way it was written! You can't tell these people apart, and that's that."

Playfulness and mystification are central to The Reading of a New Play. Gurvich, the play's author, took as his point of departure the last known photograph of Baliev's troupe showing the members gathered around an actor perhaps reading from the script. The per-formance of The Reading begins with a visual recreation of this photograph. This masquerade revives onstage a moment that unites the original Bat with the new. The result is a sort of "twelve actors in search of a play," in which the twelve actors of the new Bat slip in and out of various roles, occasionally playing members of the original troupe, occasionally playing characters from the play that never was.

The troupe also relies on the audience to play a part in the development of the action onstage. At one point, the actor Aleksandr Razalin saunters out into the audience and asks if anyone can identify Matilda Kshesinskaya. He trades barbs with members of the audience until someone provides the answer that is needed to send the perform-ance into its next episode, "Kshesinskaya's Residence". While most know that she was a famous ballerina, it usually takes awhile before someone recalls that she was the last mistress of Nikolai II. Once this response is achieved, attention is returned to the stage where a ninety year old Kshesinskaya sits seemingly half-dead, wrapped in shawls, and impervious to the efforts of her bustling servant (performed by lnna Ageeva) to engage her in conversation. But once she is left alone, the old woman transforms into a beautiful young ballerina (performed by Natalya Somonova) who dances out her memories until she is carried away by soldiers of the Red Army.

One of the play's most effective sketches, "Between Earth and Heaven," portrays the fate of Valeria Barsova, one of Baliev's actresses who elected to remain in the Soviet Union and later became a famed opera star and political functionary. This scene, in which Barsova is interpreted beautifully by Natalya Godunova, portrays with humor and lyricism the fate of an actress who stepped on the throat of her own song.

The final episode, "Children of Freedom," is performed as a circus sketch. The actor Igor Ugolnikov, exhibiting an unfailing sense of timing, delivers topical one-liners, punctuating the punch lines by kick-ing balls into the audience, which, in turn, tosses them b~ck onstage. The violation of the "fourth wall" by physical interaction often leads to more substantial interaction, as improvisational exchanges arise between actor and audience. Ugolnikov's mad antics form a fitting coda

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to the play's hodge-podge style. The entire performance is accompanied by live music provided

by seven musicians from the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, while transitions between scenes are facilitated by a shadow theatre on the back stage-wall, which plays out farcical inter-ludes that often slip into lyrical, and occasionally even tragic vignettes.

Like the formation of a new theatre anywhere, the Bat has had its financial ups and downs, although it would appear to have been more fortunate than most of the small theatres which have opened (and just as often, closed) in the last few years in Moscow. After an abortive attempt to work out an affiliation with an established theatre, Gurvich took advantage of the new economic atmosphere and found initial pri-vate funding in late 1988 from a young man by the name of Aleksei Savchenko-Belsky. With a backing of 80,000 rubles, he spent three months hand-picking his troupe of twelve actors and support crew of ten. All of the actors--graduates primarily of GITIS and the Moscow Art Theatre school who had worked professionally for several years--had participated with Gurvich in the past in his kapustniki at the Theatre Union. With these organizational problems solved, his next task was to fmd a theatre in which to perform. Through contacts at GITIS and the Theatre Union, he contracted for six performances in May and June 1989 at the GITIS student theatre on Bolshoi Gnezdikovsky Lane, located in the center of Moscow just off Gorky Street. As fate would have it, this was the very theatre built expressly for the original Bat in 1915. However, Gurvich was told by the theatre administration that he could not count on remaining there beyond the six agreed-upon per-formances.

Since it is almost unheard of for young theatres to fmd such a prime location, and all the more because of the historical--one might even say spiritual--ties in this case, Gurvich still harbored hopes that he might find a way to remain as a resident in the old theatre. Although they only began rehearsing A New Play in March 1989, it was imperative for them to use the offered six performances to make an impact. When the premiere date of May 26 arrived, the troupe still faced a host of unresolved problems.

"We simply weren't ready," the 32-year-old Gurvich now reminisces. "The actors were in a trance. They thought I had gone out of my mind. I thought I had gone out of my mind. We can't do this, I thought. It's too early. My set designer, Boris Krasnov, screamed hysterically that I had ruined everything. He told me, 'You're going to have a full house tonight and they're going to see a piece of crap. In a month no one will remember you.'"

"I knew that if we slipped even the slightest, we would be just another in the crowd. No matter how much I lied to the audience that this was only a dress rehearsal, that we could change what needed changing, I knew this show would. decide our fate. But the response


from the audience was incredible. When the performance ended, I heard wild shouting and applause. When they called me onstage, I thought, 'God, maybe we've pulled it off.'"

In fact, the new theatre's frrst outing was an amazing success. The select audience of actors, directors, artists and journalists--not unlike the invitation-only audiences attending Baliev's Bat in the early years--gave Gurvich and his troupe a welcome he could only have dreamed of. Within days, news about them had spread by word of mouth throughout theatre circles. Despite occasional lapses (I attended the second performance at the urging of actor friends), the troupe's inspired theatricality easily overshadowed any shortcomings of a techni-cal nature. And whatever rough edges existed in those frrst days have since been smoothed out without any loss in the spontaneity which marks their style; they continue to perform to full houses seven to ten nights a month. The theatre was recently invited to perform at festivals in Germany and Poland, and numerous articles have appeared about them abroad as well as in the Soviet Union.2

The success of the first performances made it possible for Gur-vich to pressure GITIS officials to allow him to remain in the building for the 1989-1990 season. At present he has an agreement by which he has access to the hall for the indefinite future, although--despite the obvious advantage of the historical connections contained in the present location--he hopes one day to find his own building. The old Bat theatre is no longer suitable for the genuine cabaret atmosphere Gur-vich one day hopes to revive.

Aside from the logistical problems the theatre faces, it is also confronted by a lack of dramatic texts suitable to its needs. Everyone these days is bemoaning the lack of modern plays, but the unorthodox Bat is, perhaps, even more handicapped than most theatres. Gurvich's dissatisfaction with contemporary playwrights has led him to search for potential authors in film writers and journalists. Thus far he has found nothing that suits him. Until he does, he will continue to write his own plays or stage classics in his own evolved style.

As for The Reading of a New Play, Gurvich says, "No one could have written the kind of play I wanted--a sort of psychological happen-ing. Not that the audience would actually participate in the perform-ance, but that they would be invited to take part in a revelation about a theatre that once existed here and then left. For that reason I come out every night and tell them, 'This theatre existed right here.' The audience begins to feel that connection and to grasp our sense of play-fulness. Each performance is, in effect, a reopening and rediscovery of the Bat."

In fact, it is much more. It is also one of the most lively and innovative theatres in Moscow today. There is nothing small-scale in the so-called small-form aesthetics that form its basis. Its theatricality is matched only by a handful of other Moscow theatres, and its manner of

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responding to the changing world in which it exists is more effective than a hundred new plays on "contemporary themes."

Despite its unquestioned popularity among a small circle of influential admirers, Baliev's Bat was never more than a star in a firma-ment of suns. It is true that one play does not make a theatre. But assuming that the new incarnation of the Bat is able to develop freely, it has the potential of linking small- and large-form aesthetics in a way that could make a genuine contribution to the development of Russian and Soviet theatre.

NOTES

1Until1987, the All-Russian Theatre Society (VfO). 2See: Bernard Genies, "Cabaret," Nouvelle Observateur, No. 15

(1989); Natan Eidel'man, "V podvale doma svoego," Moskovskie novosti, No. 26 (1989); Francis Klines, "Russian Life is a Cabaret Again: With New Chums," New Yorlc Times (August 16, 1989)(Reprinted as "Glas-nost is a Cabaret" in the International Herald Tribune [August 19-20, 1989]); Anatolii Smelianskii, "Cabaret? Kabare!" Moskovskie novosti, No. 33 (1989); Cicilia Bertolde, "Rossiia noch'iu," Amika, No. 39 (1989); "Spustia vosem'desiat odin god," Teatral'naia Moskva, No. 35 (1989); Katia Gliiger, "Die Rettung liegt im Lachen," Stem, No. 49 (1989); Alek-sandr Minkin, "Kabare," Ogonek, No. 11 (1990).


RED FISH IN AMERICA

Alma Law

On April 21 and 22, the Collective for Living Cinema in New York offered American audiences their first opportunity to see the work of young, independent film and video artists from the Soviet Union. Curated by Marie Cieri of the Boston-based Arts Company and Mos-cow independent filmmaker, Igor Aleinikov, it presented ftfteen works by thirteen artists, all dating from the period 1985-1990. Following its New York showing, the program traveled to eleven other cities during a month-long tour of the United States.

A part of the new youth culture, the parallel cinema movement, as it is known in the Soviet Union, has up until now worked entirely out-side the State film production and distribution system which does not recognize either 16 mm film or video as legitimate art forms. As Boris Yukhananov, perhaps the leading theoretician of the movement, has explained, "We're neither for nor against the official system of film making; that's why we reject the term underground which suggests some kind of protest. We merely want to be free to work on our own terms, nothing more."

This small, but growing band of young media innovators (most of them are under thirty) has been working since the pre-glasnost days of the early 1980s. At the first festival of parallel cinema held in Mos-cow in March 1987, some twenty-five film and video artists from Mos-cow, Leningrad, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius took part. By the time they held their second festival in March 1989 the number had grown to fifty. Some sense of the radical change in attitude toward this form of art over the past several years is evidenced by the fact that while the first festival brought accusations of "damaging the state monopoly on cinematic pro-duction," the second festival was held in the Union of Cinematog-raphers' Dom Kino and was sponsored in part by the Leningrad Kom-somol which footed the bill for the participants' travel and living expen-ses.

The representative selection of 16 mm films and videos included in the U .S. exhibition reveals a wide-ranging exploration of styles and subject matter ranging from music videos (represented by Latvian video artist, Ilze Petersone's Damn It (1989) featuring the Lat-vian punk rock group Zig Zag) to the freewheeling Leningrad style of "scratch animation" as in Supporter of 0/f (1987) by Inal Savchenko, Evgenii Kondratyev, K. Mitenev and A. Ovchinnikov.

Among the best known of the independents are the Leningrad founders of nekrorealizm (deathly realism), twenty-nine year old Evgenii Yufit and Andrei Mertvyi (mertvyi is the Russian word for "dead"). Their films, filled with images of violence and death, represent some of the most vivid and extravagant manifestations of parallel cinema. They

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are represented in the program by Yufit's first ftlm, Orderly-Werewolves (1985) and Yufit and Mertvyi's Spring (1987), a nightmarishly humorous tale reflecting the brutality of former Soviet regimes.

The Aleinikov brothers, Igor (28) and Gleb (24), who are accompanying the program on its tour around the United States have been making 16 mm films together since 1986. Their film, Tractors (1987), one of the most interesting of the works shown, co-opts one of the icons of Soviet cinema, the tractor (Eisenstein's The Old and the New is the classic example), and presents it parodistically using the swollen rhetoric and overblown style of the typical Soviet documentary, in much the way that Sotsart parodies the conventions of classical Socialist Realist painting and sculpture.

Central to the film is the narration which starts out with an account of the history of the tractor and an explanation of how it works. Up to this point one could easily mistake this for the typical Soviet documentary. But as Tractors takes off into flights of rhetoric, the voice of a tractor operator is heard enthusing over how she "leaps out of bed in the morning, quickly gulps down her breakfast and rushes out to her dear tractor." This paean to the tractor culminates in a song likening the tractor to a space ship: "Our own dear Chelyabinsk tractor /Is in orbit as high as the moon,/ And at night, next to the sun's partner /The best metal in the world makes me croon."

Video and theatre director Boris Yukhananov (33) is represented in the program by excerpts from two of his works, Game of HO (1987) and Crazy Prince Kuzmin, Part II ''Actor" (1989). Yuk-hananov's videos have for good reason been called "slow," and at times even that's an understatement. Crazy Prince Kuzmin, Part II ''Actor", for example, is a single chapter from an extended work in progress ambitiously titled, "Video Novel on a Thousand Cassettes."

Working very much in the style of "cinema verite," Game of HO is built, as Yukhananov explains, on an inductive game which his per-formance group Theatre-Theatre invented in the mid-1980s. The game, whose rules are made up in the course of play, and which has no winner or loser, is based on the two letter-symbols comprising its name--"H," in Russian "X" (pronounced "kh"), combining the meaning of the crossing out of life, the symbol of the cross and the multiplication sign, and "0," representing the meaningless of the life crossed out.

In its uncut version Game of HO runs for three hours, focusing mainly on the interaction between the youth culture of the eighties and the dissident culture of the seventies as seen th

seep vol.10 no.2 summer 1990

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