NEWSNOTES on SoviET ond EAsT EuROPEAN DRAMA end THEATRE

Volume 2, Number l March, 1982

EDITOR'S NOTE

This issue marks the beginning of our second year of publication. It is my pleasure to report to you that we have grown to more than five hundred institutional and individual subscribers and, most assuredly, considerably more readers who share the NEWSNOTES with subscribers. It appears that we are meeting a long-neglected need in a discipline which is considerably more popular than we imagined. It is therefore doubly gratifying that the Summer Institute will be repeated in 1982 (see page 2).

I would like to thank many of our readers for their encouragingly complim_entary letters. Please do let us know what you would like to see ir. this publication. Of course this will require your contributions of material, e.g., reviews, bibliographic and instructional materials, and short articles of special interest. It is understandable that Soviet theatre and drama will continue its tendency to overshadow material from other Eastern European nations. It is therefore to be hoped that more of you will submit items of interest to our readers concerning Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. We wish you a most productive year.

NEWSNOTES 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 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Graduate School and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of George ~ason University. The Institute Office is Room 801, City University Graduate Center 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. All subscription requests (no charge) and submissions should be addressed to the Editor of NEWSNOTES: Leo Hecht, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030.

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CITY UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL ANNOUNCES 1982 HUMANITIES INSTITUTE ON

CONTEMPORARY EASTERN EUROPEAN THEATRE

The Center for Advanced Study in Theat re Arts of the Graduate School and University Center of the City Universi ty of New York has received a second National Endowment for the Humanities grant to repeat its six-week Humanities Inst itute on "Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre: Poland and the Soviet Union," from June 13 to July 24, 1982, in New York City. Applications for participation are now being invited.

The Institute, which was held for the first time in the summer of 1980, will explore new ways of integrating the study of Polish and Soviet dramatic literature into American university curricula by developing innovative cross-disciplinary programs incorporating the teaching of foreign languages, drama and theatre.

Twenty college and university teachers of Slavic languages. and literature, comparative literature, drama or theatre arts, and area studies in the social sciences will be chosen to participate in the Institute which will be held at the City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42 Street in Manhattan. As part of the Institute's program, each participant will prepare a new course incorporating the study of Polish and/or Soviet drama and theatre to be taught at his or her own institution in 1982-83.

The success of the first Institute indicated a continued need to provide opportunities to study further the historical and cultural roots, content, structure and techniques of Eastern European and Soviet dramatic literature and theatre. Given the general inaccessibility of information from this region, knowledge about its drama and theatre tends to be severely limited and out-of-date. Efforts to study the genre on American college and university campuses have been further limited by a lack of formal training among faculties in these areas. Yet, despite these limitations, there col}tinues to be a remarkable strong--and growing--interest in this field.

The Institute will feature morning seminars devoted to the study of contemporary Polish and Soviet drama and a comparative analysis of the two so that common features can be identified and unique problems isolated. Afternoon sessions will focus on the theatre in relation to the distinctive cultural traditions of these two countries. The program will emphasize how the dramatic text comes to life in Polish and Soviet theatres and how the practices and traditions of

Ea~tern European theatre shape its dramaturgy.

Institute faculty will include: William Kuhlke, Professor of Speech and Drama/Slavic and Soviet Area, University of Kansas; Boleslaw Taborski, theatre critic, translator and a recognized authority on Polish drama; Kazimierz . Braun, Artistic Director and General Manager of Teatr Wsp&czesny, Wroclaw, Poland and Professor of Theatre at Wroclaw University and t he National School of Drama in Cracow; and Victor Rozov, playwright and Professor of Drama at the Gorky Institute of Literature, Moscow.

Deadline for applications is March 15. Candidates must have a full-time teaching appointment at a university or college in the U.S. Preference will be

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given to those candidates who have not attended an NEH-funded Humanities Institute, Summer Seminar or Residential Seminar within the last two years. A stipend of $2,500 to cover living expenses and round trip transportation to New York will be provided.

For further information, contact Alma H. Law, Institute Director, CASTA, Room 801, City University Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. Telephone: (212) 790-4249 or 4464.

RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVIST THEATER AT GUGGENHEIM

In conjunction with the exhibition Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections from the George Costakis Collection, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented four performances of The Magnanimous Cuckold: An Evening of Russian Constructivist Theater, December 10-13, 1981. Selected scenes from this farce by Belgian playwright Fernand Crommelynck have been recreated from Vsevolod Meyerhold's 1922 Moscow production and were performed on the Guggenheim's reconstruction of the original Constructivist stage set designed by Liubov Popova. Directed by Alma H. Law and Mel Gordon, the program also included introductory comments about the play, a demonstration of Meyerhold's Biomechanical exercises and reminiscences by actress Stella Duff-Ogonkova, who appeared in the 1922 production.

Meyerhold's staging of the play is regarded as one of the seminal productions of 20th-century avant-garde theatre, and the Guggenheim presentation was based on his unpublished notes and prompt-book for that production. Popova's set marked a milestone in the history of Russian theatre and profoundly influenced stage design. Popova also designed the simple, loose- fitting blue "work uniforms" worn by the performers, recreated for the Guggenheim production by art historian and designer Erika Hofmann-Koenige.

The Evening of Russian Constructive Theatre will also be performed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on March 25-28. Information about the performances can be obtained by calling (713) 526-1361 or by writing to the museum, 1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77265.

SUMMER RESEARCH LABORATORY AT ILLINOIS

The Russian and East European Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer in 1982 its tenth annual Summer Research Laboratory on Russia and Eastern Europe. The program is designed for scholars who wish to use the resources of the University Library. Graduate students doing dissertation research are also eligible. Associateships will be available for any period of time between June 14 and August 7. In addition to full library privileges, Associates will be offered free dormitory lodging for up to fourteen days, and are welcome to stay longer at their own expense, at a cost of about $45 per week.

In addition to carrying on independent study, Associates will have the opportunity to meet with their coJleagues for the presentation of papers and the discussion of current research.

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Application forms and additional information are available from Dianne Merridith, Russian and East European Center, University of Illinois, 1208 West California, Urbana, Illinois 61801.

REPORT

The following report was submitted by one of our subscribers, Helen McMahon. We are grateful to her for sharing her experiences with us. In addition she informed me that, during her stay in Poznan, Poland, she became friends with the cabaret group "Tey," superb and extremely popular performers of satirical drama. If anyone is interested in getting in touch with Ms. McMahon, you may contact her as 8355 Alvord Street, McLean, VA 22102.

"My year, September 1980 - June 1981, of teaching English and American drama at the English Language Institute of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan encompassed activities beyond the classroom exercises. I had hoped to produce, through the efforts of my student drama club, an evening of theatre at the end of the semester. So, to utilize all fifteen of my interested students, mostly freshmen and sophomores who have a lighter academic load than upper-level students, I chose to work on scenes from three different plays.

"My premise for undertaking this project was based on the belief that drama affords a student of English as a Second Language a dynamic vehicle to better his command of the language. Plus, an introduction to American works and acting techniques is beneficient in itself.

"After Christmas break, lines were to be memorized and the nitty-gritty of putting the scenes together began. However, the political events taking place in Poland at that t ime were eventually to involve the students' world. The students held a three-day strike; their demands were very well deserved. More importantly, the formation of the student Solidarity Union took time away from the drama club. THe club disbanded, students were hard-pressed for time, with most of it being spent waiting in lines. A collection of American plays rests on the shelves of the institute's library; it is to be hoped that soon the students' Poland will be at peace and the dust on the books will be gone forever."

NEW BOOKS

Professor Larissa Onyshkevych, formerly at Rutgers, has received a grant from the Shevchenko Scientific Society of New York for completing the editing of a publication preparation for an Anthology of Modern Ukrainian Drama (in English translation). The translations were accomplished by several persons. The list of plays includes those by Lesya Ukrayinka, Mykola Kulish, Volodymyr Kolomiyets, Eaghor Kostetzky and Bohdan Boychuk. For further information, please contact Professor Onyshkevych at the Institute for Advanced Study (310 Olden), Princeton, NJ 08540.

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The University of Texas Press has just published .Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin t o the Symbolists, edited and translated by Laurence Senelick. This anthology includes pieces by Pushkin, Gogel, Belinsky, Sleptsov, Chekhov, Be1y,

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Bryusov, Blok, Andreev, Ivanov, Evreinov, Meyerhold and Annensky, many of them appearing in English for the first time. There is a lengthy introduction on the history of dramatic criticism and theory in Russian, and copious annotation.

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Michigan Slavic Publications, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, has published Russian Formalist Film Theory by Herbert Eagle. It contains translated articles by Eikhenbaum, Jakobsen, Kazanskii, Mikhailov, Moskvin, Piotrovskii and Tynianov. ISBN 0-930042-42-5. $7 .00.

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The Twayne Theatrical Arts Series has published Grigori Kozintsev by Barbara Learning, ISBN 0-8057-9276-7. This is the first book in English on one of the greatest directors of the Soviet cinema and additionally affords the reader an insight into the evolution of Soviet film through several decades.

FILM REPORT

The Soviets have recently completed their own version of a segment of the life of John Reed. It is called Insurgent Mexico and is based on Reed's reportage of the Pancho Villa revolution of 1915. It was directed by Sergei Bondarchuk who may be remembered for his six-hour version of War and Peace. The Insurgent Mexico film is 2 1/2 hours long and is a Soviet-Mexican-Italian co-production. It is due to open in Rome in early March, 1982.

Production is also drawing to a close on another John Reed film, also directed by Bondarchuk. It is titled Ten Days That Shook the World, after Reed's book, and will be approximately three hours long. It should be quite impressive, considering that 10,000 Soviet soldiers are being used as extras.

Both films star Franco Nero as Reed, Sydne Rome as Louise Bryant and Ursula Andress as Mabel Dodge, the American heiress with whom Reed had a stormy love affair before he met Bryant. The principal language of both films in English. Once the second film is completed, Bondarchuk will edit them together into a seven- or eight-hour television mini-series called Red Bells which will be syndicated world-wide. There will even be several nude scenes which will be edited out for Soviet audiences.

EVENTS IN POLAND

The following letter written by 5rawomir Mrozek appeared in the International Herald Tribune on December 18, 1981:

What It Was Not

Everyone knows what happened in Poland during the night of December 12 to 13, 1981. But not everyone seems to realize that it was neither "the declaration of a state of emergency in compliance with the Polish Constitution," as the official version put it, nor a coup d'etat or military putsch, as critics of the official version put it. What happened that night was not exceptional.

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The notion "exceptional" implies that what went before had been normal. But nothing has been normal in Poland since 1939--from the German occupation through the Soviet imposition by force of a Communist system with the acquiescence of the Western powers. What is happening in Poland now is in perfect continuity. It is not exceptional, although it is abnormal. The current anomaly is in its 36th year.

The novelty is that what had been going on continuously under cover of lies-the lie, for example, about the existence of a parliamentary system in Poland--carries on now in naked truth. That is, as sheer violence. We are back to the point of departure, a full circle in 36 years.

It is not true that the Polish Army is a third force between the Communist Party and Solidarity. Solidarity represents the population, the society, the nation. Simply, the party became too weak to continue its dictatorship over the nation without calling in the army.

Announcing the arrests of former party leaders, long since discarded, at the same time that Solidarity leaders were arrested was a master stroke of propaganda, as well as of garbage recycling. Only if Gen. Jaruzelski arrests himself as the leader of the party will the notion that the army is a third force be credible.

S.tawomir Mrozek Paris.

SOVIET FILMS

The following Soviet films are presently available for rental. Those interested should directly contact Corinth Films, 4-10 East 62nd Street, New York, NY 10021. Telephone: (212) 421-4770. Borodin: Anton Chekhov:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Nicolai Gogol: Khachatur ian:

Nana Mchelidze:

Prince Igor (110 minutes) 1972 An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano (100

minutes) 1977 Belated Flowers (100 minutes) 1972 The Seagull (99 minutes) 1971 The Shooting Party (105 minutes) 1977 Uncle Vanya Crime and Punishment (220 minutes) 1970 The Brothers Karamazov (154- minutes) 1972 The Idiot ( 120 minutes) 19 58 The Gambler (95 minutes) 1978 White Nights (95 minutes) 1959 The Overcoat (78 minutes) 1960 Pavlova in the World's Youngest BaJlet (70 minutes)

1970 Spartacus (95 minutes) 1977 First Swallow (80 minutes) 1976

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Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov (105 minutes) 1954 Jamilya (78 minutes) 1970 The Cranes Are Flying (94 minutes) 1957 The Twelve Chairs (160 minutes) 1971 White Bird With a Black Spot (102 minutes) 1972

Ballet Films With Maya Plisetskaya:

Prokofiev: Shakespeare: Andrei Tarkovsky: T chaikovsky:

Leo Tolstoy: Ivan Turgenev:

Anna Karenina (81 minutes) 1974 Plisetskaya Dances (70 minutes) 1964 Stars of the Russian Ballet (80 minutes) 1953 The Little Humpbacked Horse (85 minutes) 1961 Romeo and Juliet (95 minutes) 1954 King Lear (140 minutes) 1971 Andrei Rublev (185 minutes) 1966 Eugene Onegin (106 minutes) 1958 Sleeping Beauty (92 minutes) 1964 Swan Lake (90 minutes) 1968 The ueen of S ades (102 minutes) 1960 Father Sergius 99 minutes) 1977 A Nest of Gentry (106 minutes) 1970 Asya (97 minutes) 1977 The Blackamoor of Peter the Great 1977 The Youth of Peter - Part I 041 minutes) 1981 The Youth of Peter - Part II (137 minutes) 1981

CULTURAL NEWS FROM BULGARIA

Those interested in Bulgaria may want to subscribe to the News Bulletins of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency free of charge by writing B T A, Sofia, 4 9 Boulevard Lenin. The following is an article from a recent issue. The English is that of the original:

Club of the Artistic Intelligentsia

The organization of the creative activity of youth is an original Bulgarian experience. Many guests from foreign countries come here to become acquainted with this experience.

All the creative Unions in Bulgaria have youth sections attached to them. Thus, for instance, the Union of Bulgarian Writers has a Studio of the Young Writer, the Union of Bulgarian Composers - a Studio of the Young Composer, etc. Every Studio has a statute of its own. Membership of a Studio requires that one should have a work appreciated by the public and the critics.

These studios ensure public performances for their members. At the same time they help young people to acquire greater mastership, provide them with aid and contracts, offer them courses for improving their education, and for studying foreign languages, and ensure travel in foreign countries and holidays in special bases for them.

Besides being members of their creative unions young people can become members of the county clubs of the young artistic and creative intelligentsia. All the county centres have such dubs. They are governed by the National Club of

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Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia, chaired by Mr. Ivan Slavkov, Director General of the Bulgarian Television.

The Sofia Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia has a membership of 3,000 working in the capital. These are representatives of all kinds and genres of art. United in the Studios attached to the Creative Unions, young people are also united through membership of the Clubs of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia. The aim is for these young people not to become confined to their artistic ambitions alone, but to become better acquainted with each other and thus enlarge the sphere of their contacts. Thus some years ago the Chamber Stage of the Young Creator came into being and has since been staging performances once every month. On this Chamber Stage the young creators recite their latest works to audiences.

The Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia was set up ten years ago. The age limit in it is 35 years.

The Club also helps its members financially. It arranges contracts for them and ensures proper conditions for working, living, creating and holidaying. These young creators are employed by the respective state institutions, editorial offices, the radio and the television, the cinematography, the theatres, the state orchestra and the philharmonic orchestras. There they receive salaries in addition to the remuneration for their performances. The Club is a voluntary organization. It however does not duplicate the functions of the respective trade unions.

The Club of the Young Artistic and Creative Intelligentsia has the right to recommend young talents to the state departments for inclusion in international festivals, exhibitions, concerts, etc., and for state and other awards.

REVIEW

Professor Joseph Troncale, Director, Russian Area Studies, University of Richmond, has kindly sent us the following review of Wajda's new film Man of Iron:

As one might suspect, ripples from the Solidarity movement in Poland did not have to travel very long or very far to reach the hearts of Polish filmmakers who have always poignantly and with penetrating immediacy conveyed their keen sense of the spiritual, social, and political dilemmas facing the Polish people. Imprisoned under the recently imposed martial law, Andrzej Wajda, the president of the Polish Filmmakers' Association, has been unequivocal in expressing the PFA's desire and need for liberalization in its field. Backed by Solidarity, the PFA has established its own group toward that end, the Committee to Save National Cinematography. Among its chief aims are to gain control of film distribution beyond the uncensored havens of Warsaw, Gdansk, and Cracow to audiences in theaters throughout the country and to have a greater say in financial and distribution decisions as well as artisic freedom in its own self-management. Evidence of the progress made was the Eighth Festival of Polish Feature Film held in Gdansk last September under the shadow of the nearby constitutional convention of Solidarity. Low-keyed compared to Cannes, the Festival was completely dominated by a sense of the newly won freedoms of the workers' movement. There were many politically pertinent films; some authored by

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Solidarity itself, others on the Stalinist period by filmmakers still trying to end his grasp on them once and for all. Also screened were films that had been confiscated by the censors over the last decade. But clearly towering above them all was Wajda's film, Man of Iron.

His last film before being arrested in December, the 1981 Cannes Festival Grand Prix winner, Man of Iron is Wajda's rousing and compelling docudrama about the stirring growth of the flame of freedom in Poland during the last 12 years. The timely release of the film by United Artists in America undoubtedly contributes to the films overwhelming appeal among Americans. Through the life of a fictional hero, Maciek T omcyzk, the film chronicles the development of a unified workers' effort to establish free trade unions in Poland. The period covered is from 1968 to 1980, including the recent bargaining during which the significant gains of Solidarity were achieved.

We gain access to the movement's ideals and to the characters of the film through the reluctant efforts of a T.V. journalist (Mr. Winkiel), assigned by unsavory politicos to defame the ringleader (Maciek Tomcyzk) of the strike in Gdansk thereby weakening the movement's public support. Deeply indebted to the party, Mr. Winkiel is in a painful double bind; his frustration and futile writhing clearly convey a sense of the fundamental predicament of the media in Poland that gives rise to the people's general distrust of the media. His hatchet-job carefully planned and documented by the local police, Winkiel begins interviewing Tomcyzk's acquaintances for corroboration he knows he will not find. His investigation reveals, instead, T omcy~k's almost saint-like character which develops after the death of his father, Mateusz Birkut, the fallen worker hero of the 1970 massacre, and inspires his fiancee (Agnieszka Hulewicz), his former college roommate, and, eventually, Winkiel himself.

Total involvement in the movement and belief in its ideals have a liberating effect on Wajda's heroes. Maciek and Agnieszka fearlessly pursue that freedom which knows no bounds. For such dedication and determination, naturally, the price is high. Imprisoned, blacklisted, and subjected to frequent party recriminations for their activities, Maciek and Agnieszka are forged into suitable vessels of iron to meet the demanding standards of the movement. Given Wajda's own deep dedication to the movement, his hagiographic depiction of Maciek and Agnieszka is not surprising. Nonetheless, they both remain human beings deeply sensitive to the vicissitudes not only of their own lives but also of the lives of those all around them. For example, Agnieszka's final commitment to Maciek's struggle and their uncertain future comes only after several heartrending scenes in which she is painfully wrenched from all the familiar secure moorings of an "inoffensive" life.

Against a stark backdrop of black and white actual footage of the movement's critical moments in 1970 and 1980, Wajda depicts the development of faith in the struggle in his central characters, thus neatly juxtaposing defeat and victory and the characters' journey between these two points. Wajda's characters come alive only when they become infected by the vitality of the movement. Their relationship to the movement determines their worth and the depth of their inner qualities. The ironclad rationale of this alignment is Wadja's own ironic reversal of Stalin's unequivocal "Those who are not with us are against us". Poetic justice has never tasted so sweet.

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In the film's opening frames, the enchanting Maya Komarowska solemnly intones the gripping portentous words to the effect that entry into the world's secret garden of hope is forbidden to the Polish people. Thus, Wadja establishes the difficulties of the quest facing his promethean hero. His men of iron rise to the challenge. In the closing frames, however, Winkiel's taskmaster reappears to dampen the victory of Solidarity by telling him not to be lulled into a false sense of security; accords signed under duress are illegal. The men of iron must be vigilant! The film closes with a song that is presumably Solidarity's battlecry. Boldly declamatory and piercingly staccato, the song with its pounding beat leaves little doubt of the relentless resolve of the movement and the endless battle it will wage to achieve and secure its ideals.

REVIEW

The following is a review of Chekhov on the Lawn submitted by Professor Jerome Katsell, Department of Germanic and Slavic, SUNY Stony Brook, NY 11794:

The stage of Theatre East, an Off Broadway theatrical company located at 211 East 60th Street in New York City, is dark, enclosed in three-quarter round by some seventy-five chairs occupied by the audience. As the lights come up, there he is: long buttoned-up frock coat, brushed-back hair, high turned-back collar, loose trousers, pince-nez, moustache and scruffy goa tie, slender, unassuming: Chekhov. The time is April 17, 1900. We are on the lawn of Chekhov's villa in Yalta. We, the audience of this one-man show admirably petformed by William Shust and written and directed by Elihu Winer, are, in fact, the actors and directors of the Moscow Art Theatre touring the Crimea and come to perform for and visit with our beloved playwright Anton Pavlovich.

Shust-Chekhov is set off by a dark backdrop and a few stage properties. The odd bench and suspended birch branch, a portable table with manuscripts upon it to which the actor refers from time to time complete the scene on Chekhov's lawn. Shust looks out into the audience, perhaps at you or me, and begins: "Gorky, stop arguing and sit down." He continues, pacing and gesturing and occasionally placing or replacing his pince nez, in the course of two forty-five minute acts, to relate incidents from Chekhov's life, retail ironic Chekhovian anecdotes based on correspondence and the writer's notebooks, and retell a series of Chekhov stories that illustrate the writer's views and sense of life.

All this is well and good, and Shust adroitly accomplishes a tour de force of Chekhovian gesture and mood. The personal reminiscences, insights, and sketches are brief, telling and keep the audience's unflagging interest. In each instance, as with the portrayal of "Oysters," "Grief," "Death of a Government Clerk," and the tender and sad Chekhovian jest "Shutochka," Shust is able to portray Chekhov recounting ~is fictional characters in a manner so convincing as to allow us to suspend our disbelief.

Yet it is clear that no attempt was made by writer-director Winer to present a full dramatic portrait of Chekhov. The stories featured in Chekhov on the Lawn all fall in the early period of his writing career. They do present Chekhov's sensitivity, compassion, comic gift and light touch. They do not, however, begin to touch on the mastery of psychological portraiture, textured

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artistic structure, and deep insight into the nature of man's profound need for inner freedom and self-knowledge characteristic of Chekhov's mature prose and drama. The Chekhovian excerpts presented in Winer's play are suitable to a one-man show format, more so, undoubtedly, than such stories as "Ward No. 6," "The Lady with the Dog," "The Bishop," or "In the Ravine" would be. Only one reference to Chekhov's major plays is made throughout the production. The opening exchange in The Seagull between Medvedenko and Masha is quoted: "Med. Why do you always wear black? Mash. I'm in mourning for my life." Shust-Chekhov recites these lines first in a heavy oppressive tragical manner, and then as light-hearted banter between two young people. This is done to show Chekhov's opposition to Stanislavski's gloomy interpretation of his dramatic intentions, to illustrate Chekhov's approach to the comedic. More elements along these lines would have deepened the portrait of the artist and his work. In its present form, Chekhov on the Lawn is an effective and at times delightful theatrical conceit. It is an introduction, fine within its limitations, but far from a fully developed theatre presentation of the life, personality, and writings of Chekhov.

SPECIAL FEATURE

This highly interesting interview was sent to us by Professor Nicholas Rzhevsky, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana. Dr. Rzhevsky was, of course, himself the interviewer. The interview was conducted two years ago.

Yurii Liubimov is the best known of contemporary Russian theater directors--the most likely heir to Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Vahtangov. His Tanganka Theater has been widely acclaimed in the West, and his witty, often daring pronouncements on the state of the arts in the U.S.S.R. have regularly suggested the innovative and irrepressible Russian culture. Liubimov's reputation is firmly linked with his country's socio-political condition. His recent dramatic work, "A Tale of Inspection," concludes with a horrifying scene in a mental hospital taken from Gogel's "Diary of a Madman." At the curtain the director comes out to take his bows led on stage by two psychiatric ward attendants, reminding his audience of the present-day issue, of the threat to the unorthodox, and the precarious situation of his own theater.

The Taganka often hovers, in this fashion, on the borderline between the Aesopian and the forbidden. Tickets are priced below two roubles, but typically for life in Moscow, it is impossible to purchase them without either knowing someone or queuing for an inordinate length of time. A good part of the repertoire consists of dramatic adaptations of classical Russian poetry and prose. Censorship, psychiatric wards, and utilitarian materialism are questioned on stage, but in the nineteenth-century words of Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The historical-classical frame permits a great deal to be said that scarcely would be allowed in a modern Moscow setting.

Recently, however, Liubimov went on a new version of the Queen of Spades for the Paris Opera, only to be denounced in Pravda and the Moscow Literary Gazette for a' supposed injury to T chaikovsky's classical canons. Permission to travel to Paris was withdrawn and the entire Franco-Soviet cultural exchange program was thrown into jeopardy. Other invitations to work in Germany, Italy,

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England, and the United States have been held up by Soviet authorities. The death of -Vladimir Vysotskii and plans to commemorate him on the Taganka stage have created new tensions which have prompted Liubimov to threaten resignation.

In the course of our conversation the intense in-fighting required to survive in Mosco..y became abundantly clear. Liubimov's reminiscences of the closing of Moscow Art Theater Two and of Yurii Olesha's famous 1934 speech--a last anguished gasp of the Russian intelligentsia before the terror set in--served as a reminder of the continuity of this struggle in the arts. For Liubimov, however, society and politics are only a part of a complex theatrical aesthetic which incorporates the topical issues of dramaturgy-questions of narrative voice, of temporal and spatial organization, of acting technique and training, of the dramatic uses of music and dance-as well as moral impulses extending back to the Russian traditional sources: the land, the people, and Orthodoxy. Such basic cultural attachments are frequently filtered out in the political prism-if the bewilderment with which Solzhenitsyn and other emigres have been received in the West is any measure. Mr. Liubimov remembers with affection his grandparents, a bright mixture of peasants and gypsies. His memories of his grandfather's village-of a large garden full of apples, gooseberries, raspberries, of the grandfather himself, a man of firm religious convictions--are particularly strong. A recurring motif in our conversation, a point of departure, apparently, in shaping intellectual directions, was Russian literature. We spoke backstage in the Taganka after the premiere of A Tale of Inspection.

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Q. Yurii Petrovich, many of your plays begin off-stage, in the foyer, or even in the entrance to the theater. Allow me to begin in the same way--what did you read in your youth, before you started on you stage career?

A. I read a great deal . well, all of Russian literature from an early age. My father liked books, books, on history especially. Mother was a teacher, although she was half Gypsy. My grandfather on my mother's side was a gypsy-a pure-blooded gypsy but one who had settled down, not out of a caravan or nomadic.

Q. Did you have favorite authors?

A. I liked Dostoevsky from the very first. And I do not understand--there are many people who say, oh that Dostoevsky is so heavy, he oppresses my soul, I do not want to live. While, on the contrary, he always provided me with answers to some, many questions that always worry man. Fyodor Mihailovich. And it is not by accident that I got the idea--well, if I have some life left in me--to put on Dostoevsky. I already staged Crime and Punishment in Budapest, and it is now in rehearsal here in my own theater. Then I will do The Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, several plays, then an "aggregate" play such as the one based on Gogel's works.

Q. How did you get involved in the theater? A. It is hard to say

Q . You did not come out of a theatrical family.

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A. No, it is strange, even my mother used to tell me how she once came home--1 must have been about five then, I remember it hazily-and she said that I was wriggling and dancing about the room. I used to love to dance and invented dances myself. And she asked 'What are you dancing, Yura?' And I said, 'I am dancing the hair dance, hair. You know, you curl your hair with a curling iron and it goes round and round and that is how I am curling I am wriggling in the same way and dancing.' So I used to be asked to do the hair dance. When I had already begun my studies Isadora Duncan was all the rage, there were plasticity study groups. I was sent to school.

Q. Of dance?

A. Yes. I was a little boy, a complete child, but one's youth is always a huge influence. I remember also that it was a great joy when I was accepted into the theatrical studio of Moscow Art Theater Two. It was closed down; unfortunately theaters are often shut down here, or they die a natural death, well, like people. Theaters grow old, are born, die, a new one grows up, and so on. I was accepted into MAT Two, and I only remember a boundless joy. I would jump on trolleys then jump off and run because it seemed to me to be going slower than I. I could not sit down, I was so caught up in the tremendous joy of being accepted. My reception was a bit strange because I read Yurii Olesha's speech to the First Congress Writers and the members of the examining committee were surprised that I picked that and read it for my test. I was very young. They did not want to accept me because they did not know what I would turn out to "be.

Q. That was about 1935?.

A. Yes, probably. Most likely in '34. I finished intermediate school. Then I was an electrician. I finished the theatrical school early, and, in general, I began to act early. I was studying and already acting. When MAT Two was closed down I went over to the Vakhtangov Theater. I graduated from the studio before the war. Then I wound up in the army, then there was the Finnish War. I was a soldier for eight years.

Q. Your major theatrical work began in the Vakhtangov Theater where you played leading roles.

A. Many roles. Pasternak's Romeo--! made Boris Leonidovich's acquaintance there. From the theater today I am going straight to the dacha of Andrei Voznesensky, whom I met there also. I was always interested in poetry. I write verse for myself but have never publised it.

Q. Why?

A. I do not want to. Andrei knows some of my work and even embarrassed me once. He went out to the T chaikovsky Concert Hall, read some of my short verse, and said that he valued me not only as a director, but as a poet. Which elicited the audience's bewilderment. Andrei wanted to write a poem on an interesting incident. I was once playing Romeo and in fencing a piece of the foil flew off and hit the chair where Pasternak was sitting. It pierced the chair, between Pasternak and Voznesensky.

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Q. Quite an opportunity to work out a metaphor. A. Yes.

Q. What influence did that basic work in the Vahtangov Theater have on you? A. You know, I was not acquainted with Vahtangov personally. He died a long

time ago. But I have been very fortunate, I think, in one regard. That in my life fate has brought me into contact with creative, interesting people. With wonderful people of tremendous talent, with Eisenstein and Pasternak, and wonderful writers. And now I am on friendly terms with marvelous musicians. They all played a role, beginning with my brother who is four years older. He was very involved in painting-a talented person, in my opinion, then things changed and he abandoned it-well, he used to take me along when I was very young and he would go out to paint. He developed the love of nature in me, the ability to see, feel, love nature. To see light, mood. That is why, perhaps, I like to work so much with light in staging. When I became an actor I always felt results, form very strongly. And when a director would suggest the wrong mise en scene, I would always get very nervous; it would feel clumsy to me, I would argue. Because of this I was an unbearable actor for directors. And it is probably not an accident that I changed professions at forty-five, and began to work-first as a teacher, and then totally as a director. Even now, in most cases, I do most of the staging myself, the working copies of scripts. I myself make up the text. That is, for me it is always more interesting to be the author of the play. Of course, I work with scenarists, with artists, composers, at times with a choreographer. But I always write out the entire play in my head, create it in my head as if by film frames.

Q. At what point do you plug in the music, let's say? A. You know, often ideally, I try to come out on the stage to the actors when I

can already show them the basic mise en scene, even play the music for them. I try to go through a long preparatory period before coming into space, and starting to solve space.

Q. Along with Vakhtangov there are portraits of Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, and Brecht in the foyer of your theater.

A. These are the great reformers, revolutionaries of the theater, of the thousand-year old stage art. That is why they are there.

Q. Is this a mark of your esteem in a general way, or are there specific theatrical devices, theatrical ideas?

A. Yes, there is an indication of respect here. They are all great men who are very individual and very different. But each is very interesting to me, curious, and each has had a great influence on me and provided me with a great deal. I am grateful to them as teachers, but as symbolic ones, so to say, since I did not work with any one of them. It is true that when I was a very young actor-student, I was playing some pantomine and Meyerhold saw me. I appeared amusing to him and he asked Simonov, the director of the

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Vahtangov Theater, to call me over. Simonov beckoned for me to come off stage, and I remember Meyerhold's profile, his huge nose not unlike Cyrano's. He said, 'Do not ever give up plastid ty, always train your body if you want to be a master-actor.'

Q. You did not stop on any particular theatrical tradition? A. What sense is there in that? I simply try to find something that is my own,

evolving out of certain things.

Q. Immediately after your first play, The Good Woman of Setzuan, your theater already showed its own ''Taganka" style.

A. Yes, of the square, a theater of buffoonery.

Q. With the participation of Voznesensky you create a theatrical work out of his verse. What was it that attracted you to Voznesensky?

A. The bright individuality of his poetic talent. My own creative search interested him from the first Brecht play and I tried to entice him into the theater. Boris Leonidovich used to say 'Read him, he is a very interesting, original young man; he will be a major poet.' It seemed that it would be a curious experiment. Afterward we did a whole series of plays based on poetry, on a poetic foundation. Theater without poetry is unimaginable. Take Dostoevsky. We worshipped Shakespeare, Homer, Pushkin. There can be no theater without poetry.

Q. There is a clean break in your repertoire away from the classical. Your main scripts are based on poetry, novels, short stories.

A. That is because we have absolutely no interesting plays. If there was some unique, engrossing play, of course, I would put it on. Why do you think I search out so painfully how to transmit prose to the stage? On the other hand, it does give me more freedom; my hands are not tied. I am not tied to dramaturgy and can, with greater freedom, construct my own dramaturgy for an aesthetics of the given theater That is, for how I myself imagine things. When I arrive at the basic idea why I am taking a certain work and what I want to say to my contemporaries today, I begin to fantasize the performance, the music, and the light, and the form of the staging. And it seems to me that I am not alone in my interest in certain problems. Thank God, fate has not tricked me yet. The theater goer, after all, continues to come to us all these fifteen years and it is hard to get in to see us. So that what troubles me must be of some interest to a number of people.

Q. In regard to that unfortunate affair in Paris with The Queen of Spades. Although you encountered a great deal of boorishness in people who think that it is specifically all and only they who know how to interpret a work, there is a fundamental question for directors and, in general, for the interpretation of an art work hidden (although rather deeply) within their criticism. That is, where are the boundaries and standards of any

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interpretation? How does one establish such boundaries, or is everything allowed?

A. No, of course everything is not allowed. That is, everything should be allowed but life will bring its own corrections. A production can elicit no response from the audience, only bewilderment and irritation. It can be entirely rejected. But, after all, why suspect another person of some scoundrelly act such as Zhiuraitis suspects us three? (A.M. Zhiurai tis, conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra, wrote the principal letters attacking Liubimov and his colleagues in the Soviet Press. NR) It is tactless and ugly. There is such a thing as professional relations, after all, especially since it was Genadii Rozhdestvensky who accepted him into the Bolshoi Theater. He could have asked him, 'Is it possible that the composer Schnitke will rewrite something? Is it possible that you are thinking of deforming Pyotre Illich's score was preserved. Not one note was changed!

Q. I think your idea, as well, was that the text itself should sound better?

A. Oh God, about that there is so much. In Tchaikovsky's own letters he writes 'never perform my chorus alone.' We allowed ourselves to make some cuts that seemed appropriate to the core theme for us. And the libretto, his brother's, is mediocre, so that we tried to bring it closer to Pushkin's story.

Q. What other plays would you like to put on?

A. I will be doing Dostoevsky in this theater; the rehearsals are already in progress. Yesterday we had the last rehearsal for Crime and Punishment. The novel is horribly misunderstood, especially by the young. It is read diametrically opposite .

Q. Raskolnikov as a positive hero.

A. Yes, yes. Once, a positive hero; and two, that he is crushed by the environment, and that it is a revolt against the environment. In general, this links up with the wave of extremism and terrorism which has engulfed the world. It is a prophetic work, and it is understood incorrectly, in a fabricated way.

Q. One often senses a strong moral thread in your work, in the classical sense of Russian literature and drama.

A. I try, to the extent of my capabilities, to continue our great literary tradition, which is entirely based on a deep, moral source.

Q. In the nineteenth century this moral impulse was provided by religion--Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogo!, of course-while in the twentieth century religion is impossible either for you, or for us. Is it not?

A. It is hard to say. Look, Lev Nikolaevich, who had all his moral beginnings, and who, by the way, used to give Gogo! grades and always an "A" for moral behavior. With a bit of irony, or course. He liked "The Carriage" best of

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all, but even when he criticized Gogel he always gave him an "A" for his moral premises. Look at the paradox. Coming entirely out of Christian principles, Lev Nikolaevich was anathemized by the official church. Everyone, after all, believes in his own way. Everyone has his own world of ideals, and his own moral world. But there is some minimal norm that is indispensible for our existence on earth. There are norms of behavior and if the world does not follow them, then our life, our earthly life, becomes unbearable. And all the mishaps occur because we continually upset these moral canons, these moral norms, moral code, if you like. Where am I indeed to search for moral foundations if not in our literature? It is so deeply respected by the entire world because of its profound aesthetic, but also thanks to its deep spirituality, the profundity of its moral core. Thanks to its profound honesty, and its service to the people. Sick Chekhov goes off to Sakhalin, himself mortally ill. Lev Nikolaevich leaves home in search of the truth. All our great writers always tired to understand the pain and suffering of our people.

Q. Is such a moral gesture possible today? A. Without this gesture it will be harder and harder to live. And not only for

us. Look how frightening that wave is, what goes on in Italy. Each day one grabs one's head, not unlike Gogel in Andreev's shrewd statue; he sits, sad, and presses his hands to his face.

Q. A more practical question. It is often written in the West that the theater must be supported by the government, by financial subsidies. Can a complex, experimental theater exist without such financial support?

A. There have always been patrons of the arts. One just wishes, God willing, that they be educated, cultured, really support art. I think real talent is always of benefit to man; I scarcely know any damaging talents. Puskin used to say that genius and villainy are imcompatible. Life is so set up that patrons were always found, and I think, they will continue to be found. It is important only, that there be some minimal conditions which make it possible for art to develop. That there be no drought.

Q. The government should support theater?

A. Of course. It must, it seems to me, provide support because art invigorates the government. Only a near-sighted ruler there is a frightening saying that a smart tyrant will never quarrel with the arts.

Q. A director's heritage can appear to be impermanent; it is not something in concrete form such as a book, a printed story. What would you like to leave behind in your aesthetic legacy?

A. Well, if I keep on living I .will write a book; I have always wanted to. A strange book. I would like to write down what my memory has preserved during my life beginning from the earliest age. Why has memory held on to certain things? Precisely these and no other? For decades it holds on to bits of novels, some reminiscences that penetrated my mind in minute fragments, and sit there, and allow no peace. There will be a lot of visual

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material, photographs, my verse, how it was put together, developed, and my observations, my meetings with people who inspired me and to whom I am indebted.

Q. As a director?

A. No, in a more general sense, in a human sense. My observations, my thoughts. But not memoirs. Everyone is writing memoirs now.

Q. I have noticed in rehearsals that you often tell actors they must study.

A. Not study as much as re-learn.

Q. In what sense? Specifically what should they learn?

A. Everything changes-man, time. The theatrical art is ancient. Now you have radio, film, television, phonographs, video-tapes, video-recordings. There is a great flow of things and the adjacent arts influence the theater. In their own time, let us say, new forms of verse appeared: five-foot iamb, blank verse, ballad, sonnet, and so on. Each new form demands its own mode of presentation. A new form of poetry appears and Pushkin writes in his diary 'God, why are our famous actors unable to read verse?' They did not grasp the form yet; they read in the old manner and the verse did not sound right, it dissipitated. That is why the actor too must revitalize his technique. Look how hard it is to stay in the game for a long time. And why? Because the technique is not brought up to date; they do not train. Drama is the most dilletante of arts--it may seem that anyone can act. A pianist recognizes that he must practice; a violinist understands that, while the actor is himself an instrument. And the instrument is often left neglected. Voice is not practiced insufficiently, plasticity, diction, musical sense. That is why actors fade away so quickly at times. It is a talent that spoils easily. And then the coach must be a good one, just as in sport. Although to score goals is a God-given talent. Simonov used to say often 'What's the use of teaching him; he won't score. He can't score goals anyway. You'll just waste your time.'

Q. There is an interpretation of the Taganka's popularity that we can call the "forbidden fruit" theory.

A. Well that's all you know, everything is said about us here. Before it was said that there are no actors in our theater, that they are. puppets. Then it was said that we are only a fad that will soon pass. But if a fad has held out for fift~en years, then maybe it is not just a fad but something else.

Q. There is an old tradition in the American theater of staying up after a premiere to read the early morning reviews.

A. That tradition has been rejected here for a long time. It does not exist. Q. How does one determine if a play is a success or not?

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A. Critics are different, in intelligence and in their creative sensibilities. There is an 'official' criticism which often reminds me of the word ofitsiant (waiter, NR). 'Your order is served, sir!' officiality. The newspapers, it seems, do not express themselves, their own opinion. Instructions are given. Maybe this has something to do with the complex atmosphere around the theater and around my name.

Q. Do you think your theater has been damaged in result?

A. No. It is all the same to me as long as they do not interfere with my work. It is damaging when they stop one from working, as with The Queen of Spades. The saddest thing is that the opportunity to work was taken away. The work perished. Three of us worked, worked, and then it is stopped. Why? The job is left undone. That is what is disgraceful.

SPECIAL NOTICE

The Bibliography of Polish Plays in Translation is now in preparation. Anyone interested in assisting in the writing of summaries and compiling of entries, please contact Professor Daniel Gerould through the office of the Institute for Contemporary Eastern European Drama and Theatre.

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