SEEP Vol.17 No.3 Fall 1997

volume 17, no.
3
Fall1997
SEEP (ISSN # 1047-0018) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East 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 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 Slavic and
East European Performance: CASTA, Theatre Program, City University
Graduate Center, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Jennifer Parker Starbuck
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Susan T enneriello
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Susan T enneriello
ASSIST ANT CIRCULATION MANAGERS
Patricia Herrera
Ramon Rivera-Servera
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Alma Law
Martha W. Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick
Allen J. Kuharski
CAST A Publications are supported by generous grants from the Lucille
Lortel Chair in Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in Theatre in the
Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York.
Copyright 1997 CAST A
SEEP has a very liberal reprinting policy. Journals and newsletters that
desire to reproduce articles, reviews, and other materials that have appeared
in SEEP may do so, as long as the following provisions are met:
a. Permission to reprint the article 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 Editors of SEEP immediately upon
publication.
2 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 17, No.3
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
ARTICLES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
6
7
14
'"I Was Always in the Epicenter of Whatever Was Going On .. .': 16
An Interview With Wanda Jakubowska"
Stuart Liebman
"Tarkovsky's Odes to ... Joy?" 31
Roger Hillman
FESTIVAL REVIEWS
"The Third International Gombrowicz Festival"
Allen J. Kuharski
"Theatre in Croatia: The 1997 Summer Festivals
in Dubrovnik and Split"
Allan Graubard and Caroline McGee
"Varna: Festival on the Black Sea"
Glenn Loney
REVIEWS
37
48
54
"Seagulls Over Niagara" 64
Laurence Senelick
"From Craiova to Lincoln Center: Silviu Purciirete's 68
Les Danaides and Contemporary Romanian Theatre"
Eric Pourchot
3
"Rebuilding the Ruins: Intercultural Theatre Alliances 76
Between the U.S. and Eastern-Central Europe"
Telory Williamson
Contributors 84
Publications 87
4
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 17, No.3
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 submissions must concern themselves either with
contemporary materials on Slavic 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 welcome
submissions reviewing innovative performances of Gogo! but we cannot use
original articles discussing Gogo! as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will
also gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else which
may be of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully
proofread. The Chicago ManU<Jl of Style should be followed. Trans-
literations should follow the Library of Congress system. Articles should
be submitted on computer disk as either Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS or
Wordperfect 6.0 for Windows documents (ASCII or Text Files will be
accepted as well) and a hard copy of the article should be included.
Photographs are recommended for all reviews. All articles should be sent
to the attention of Slavic and East European Performance, cl o CAST A,
CUNY Graduate School, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
Submissions will be evaluated, and authors will be notified after
approximately four weeks.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
The Fall1997 issue features Stuart Liebman's interview with Polish
filmmaker Wanda Jakubowska, who has recently celebrated her ninetieth
birthday. As a consequence of his earlier article on The Last Stop,
Jakubowska's seminal film about the Holocaust (see PAGES FROM THE
PAST, SEEP Volume 16, no. 3, Fall1996), Stuart went to Warsaw to meet
with the director. The interview that resulted presents a vivid portrait of
J akubowska and offers her own highly personal interpretation of her life
and career as well as of the entire period. We also include an article by
Roger Hillman on music in Tarkovsky's films and a special Festival section
with articles by Allen J. Kuharski, Allan Graubard and Caroline McGee,
and Glenn Loney. There are also reviews of productions by Laurence
Senelick, Eric Pourchot, and Telory Williamson.
SEEP now has an E-mail address, seepjour@email.gc.cuny.edu and we urge
readers to contact us in this fashion.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York
EVENTS
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, translated by E. E. Batchelor and
set in England after WWII, was presented by the Undercroft Players at
Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, and in a separate production, directed
by Thomas Luce Summa, at the Merchant's House Museum in June.
The Polish Theatre Institute in the USA presented In Pursuit of
Liberty ... , featuring Nina Polan, Adam Borys, and Eugenia Roszczenko
with musical accompaniment by Mieszko Gorski in a performance of
poetry, contemporary texts, and vocal music celebrating the American
constitution (1787) and Polish constitution (1791), at the Consulate General
of the Republic of Poland on September 13.
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, adapted by David Mamet, was performed
by The Yahoo Escadrille Theatre company at the Currican Theatre from
September 17 to 21
Pamela Billig and Eugene Brogyanyi, artistic directors of the
Threshold Theatre Company in New York, produced their annual Festival
of International One-Act Plays, CAUGHT IN THE ACT '97 at the Here
Theatre from September 11 to October 5. Plays by Slavic and East European
writers presented during the festival included Romanian Dadaist Tristan
Tzara's The Gas Heart (1920), directed by Paul Lazar, a selection from the
Polish writer Konstanty Ildefons Galczyri.ski 's Little Theatre of The Green
Goose (1946-1947), and Hungarian playwright Ferenc Karinthy's Steinway
Grand (1967), directed by Pamela Billig.
Chekhov's The Bear was presented by the Oasis Theatre Company
as part of a one-act play Festival, "Marriage by the Masters," at the Oasis
Theatre from September 4 to October 12.
"The Magic of Czech Puppetry," a Mini-festival of Czechoslovak
American Marionette Theatre, was presented at the Vineyard Theatre from
7
October 1 to 26. Performances featured Vit Horejs' Hamlet and Unsatiable
Rooty & other Czech Tales with Strings.
Naked Revolution, an opera written and composed by Dave Soldier
and Maita di Niscemi, was presented at the Kitchen from October 9 to 18.
Chekhov's The Proposal and The Bear were presented by the
Tiltyard Trust Repertory at La Belle Epoque in October.
Alexander Ostrovsky's The Forest, directed by Shepard Sobel, was
presented at the Pearl Theatre from October 21 to November 30.
Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre presented Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard, directed by Galina Volchek, at the Martin Beck Theatre from
October 29 to November 9.
David Hare's adaptation of Ivanov, directed by Gerald Gutierrez
and featuring Kevin Kline was presented at the Lincoln Center Theatre from
October 23 to November 19.
Kazimierz Braun adapted and directed Bruno Jasienski's Dummies
Ball at the State University of New York in Buffalo in November. Act I of
the play was performed in the University's Center for the Arts Drama
Theatre and Act II was performed in the Black Box Theatre.
The Immigrants' Theatre Project presented a staged reading of
Simon Zlotnikov's Two Poodles, directed by Arnold Shvetsov and translated
by Alma Law, as part of the fourth annual New Immigrant Play Festival at
the Henry Street Settlement Abron Arts Center From November 17 to 19.
The Moscow Novaya Opera came to New York to perform
Eugene Onegin at the Martin Beck Theatre from November 19 to 30.
Alexander Vvedensky's Christmas at the Ivanovs', directed by Karin
Coonrod, in a new translation by Julia Listengarten and Karin Coonrod,
will be performed at Classic Stage Company (CSC) from December 9, 1997
to January 4, 1998. A workshop was held for the production at CSC from
July 30 to August 14.
8 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 17, No. 3
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Europe
The Avignon Summer Festival in France this July featured works
by several of Russia's leading directors. Performances included Ostrovsky's
Wolves and Sheep, directed by Piotr Fomenko (who was not present); a one
hour adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls, directed by Valeri Fokine;
Turgeniev's A Month in the Country, directed by Sergei Genovech;
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, directed by Evgeni Kamenkovich; K.l. de
Crime, based on Dostoyevsky, directed by Kama Guinkas; two musical
pieces by Anatoli Vassiliev, The Lamentations of jeremiah, based on music by
Vladimir Martinov, and Amphitryon, based on Moliere's play; from St.
Petersburg Georgian director Rezo Gabriadze presented a puppet show The
Song for the Volga or The Battle o/Stalingrad, with music by Shostakovich,
and Ivan Popovsky presented a playlet by the Russian poet, Tsvetayeva, An
Adventure. Other productions of interest were Mayakovsky's The Bathhouse,
adapted and directed by South American director Marcos Malavia and his
Sourou Company; A Fortune, another Tsvetayeva piece, never before
published or translated, presented by Jeanne Boisaubert; and Svetlana
Alexeyevich's Utopias (Castaways from Utopia), an oratorio for three actors
directed by Jean-Marie Lajude.
DANCE
The Kirov Ballet from St. Petersburg performed excerpts from The
Nutcracker, Le Corsaire, Giselle, La Sylph ide, Romeo and Juliet, and Sleeping
Beauty at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, Bronx, New York
on October 5.
The World Music Institute presented Hungarian Gypsy Folk
Music and Dance, featuring Muzsikas and Maria Sebestyen at Town Hall in
New York on October 19.
FILM
Emir Kusturica's Underground was screened at Anthology Film
Archives in New York in June and is currently playing in New York
theatres. The film was the 1995 winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
9
Czech director Jan Sverak's The Ride (1995) was screened at
Anthology Film Archives in New York in June.
Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Dragojevic's anti-war film, Pretty Village,
Pretty Flames (1996), was presented at Anthology Film Archives in New
York in June.
King Lear (1970), adapted and directed by Grigori Kozintsev with
a musical score by Shostakovich, was screened at the Museum of Modern
Art (in Russian with English subtitles) in June.
Slovak director Dusan Hanak's Paper Heads (1995) was presented
at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York in June.
East Side Story, a documentary on popular musicals produced by
state-run film industries of the Soviet Union, East Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria, produced and directed by
Dana Ranga and Andrew Horn, was shown at Film Forum in New York
from June 25 to July 8. The film was first shown at Sundance Film Festival
in January 1997.
A video documentary of Ubu Enchained, a Polish-American
experimental theatre piece developed by Live from the Edge Theatre and
T eatr Polski, was screened at The Point CDC in the Bronx on July 15. [ See
EVENTS, SEEP vol.17, no. 2]
The Fantastic Journeys of Wojciech Has, a retrospective Festival of the
Polish director's films, was presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center
in collaboration with the State Committee of Polish Cinematography and
Film Polski at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York from September 27
to Ocotober 10. The festival presented How To Be Loved aka The Art of
Loving Gak Bye 1963), The Saragossa Manuscript
Znaleziony w Saragossie, 1965), Codes ( Szyfry, 1966), The Doll (Lalka,
1969), The Noose (Pyt!a, 1958), Farewells (Poi:egnania, 1958), An Uneventful
Story (Nieciekawa Historia, 1982), Write and Flight (Pismak, 1985), The
Memoirs of a Sinner (Osobisty Pamiytnik Grzesznika, 1986), and The
Tribulations of Balthazar Kober (Niezwykla Podr6i: Balthazara Kobera,
1988).
10
The Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a retrospective of
Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky at the Walter Reade Theatre in New
York from October 3 to November 20. The program was composed of all
his Soviet films and some of his international productions.
A Hollywood silent film version of Andreev's He Who Gets Slapped,
featuring Lon Chaney, with live piano accompaniment was screened as part
of Lincoln Center's The Celluloid Circus series at the Walter Reade Theatre
from November 26 to December 4.
ARTS, CULTURE, NEWS
A centennial celebration of the Moscow Art Theatre gathered
leading directors and actors from around the world in Moscow at the
legendary theatre founded by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1897. The New York Times (3 June 1997)
reported much of the discussion centered on the difficulty of maintaining
the repertory and integrity of a collective theatre in the modern era. The
literary director of today's Moscow Art Theatre, Anatoly Smeliansky, said
that "Russia today has given itself to weak, popular culture from other
lands." Not everyone shared Smeliansky's complaint. Galina Volchek,
director of the Sovremennik Theatre of Moscow, defended contemporary
performance, observing that modern theatre in Russia was richly diverse and
complex.
The New York Times (14 June 1997) reported the death of the
popular Russian poet Bulat S. Okudzhava (1924-1997) in Moscow at the age
of seventy-three on June 12. Okudzhava was one of the most famous of
Russia's postwar poets, whose poems and folk songs contributed a voice of
dissent during the 1950s and 60s. His work was never officially recognized
by Soviet officials, but his songs were recorded secretly in homes and
smuggled across the Soviet Union.
In an article by Nancy Ramsey, "A Grim Reality Check in Russia"
(The New York Times 24 August 1997), Russian filmmakers discuss their
concern over a crisis in the film industry. "Six years after the collapse of the
Soviet Union," Ramsey reports, "filmmakers in Russia and the former
republics are in crisis, much like their counterparts in Poland, the Czech
Republic and Hungary." The large studios, Mosfilm and Lenfilm, which
previously produced more than sixty films a year during the Soviet era, only
11
turn out a handful today. Affecting the theatres is the audience's inability to
afford tickets, the popularity of American action movies, and a distribution
system that has been undermined by the pirating of videos.
The New York Times (27 August 1997) reported the death of the
Russian clown Yuri Nikulin at the age of seventy-five. Often called a
"Russian Charlie Chaplin," Nikulin began his career as a circus clown and
became a comic actor as well as a circus director. He also performed tragic
roles.
An International Symposium and Performance/Demonstration,
The Revizor Project, gathered historians, directors, and critics to discuss
Vsevolod Meyerhold's work in Soviet Russia during the 1920s and his
continuing legacy in contemporary theatre. The day-long Symposium, was
held at the Yale Repertory Theatre at Yale University in New Haven
Connecticut on October 4. The morning panel, "Vsevolod Meyerhold and
His World: Art & Politics of Soviet Russia in 1920s," featured presentations
by Mark Von Hagan, "Institutions and Ideology as Context for 1920s Soviet
Culture;" Yelena Kukhta, "The Petersburg Background of Meyerhold's 1926
Revizor: Experiments in Symbolism, Stylization and Tragic Grotesque;"
Katerina Clark, "Meyerhold's Appropriation of Gogo! for 1926 in Soviet
Russia;" and Nikolai Pesochinsky, "Meyerhold's Directing in the Staging of
Russian Classics." The afternoon panel, "Meyerhold's Legacy in
Contemporary Culture, moderated by Paul Schmit, included presentations
by Roma Kontradenko, "Approaches to Performance Reconstruction;"
Cheryl Favor, "Virtual Theatre of the Twenty-First Century: Meyerhold
and the Evolution of a New Art Form;" and Peter Sellars, "Meyerhold and
Contemporary Theatre." The symposium included a Biomechanics
demonstration, led by Alexei Levinsky, and a performance/ demonstration
of the ongoing collaboration between the St. Petersburg Theatrical Academy
of Theatrical Arts and Yale School of Drama who are reconstructing
Meyerhold's 1926 production of Gogol's The Inspector General. The Russian-
American restaging of Revizor was performed by students from the St.
Petersburg Acadmy and Yale School of Drama and co-directed by Gennady
Trostaneshky and David Chambers.
A photography exhibition of portraits by the Russian
Constructivist artist Alexander Rodchenko was held at Howard Schickler
Fine Art Gallery in New York from September 9 to October 11. Portraits
of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Aseev, and Lily Brik were among those
12
featured from Rodchenko's circle of friends from the Post-Revolutionary
avant-garde in the 1920s. From November 1 to December 13 the Howard
Schickler Fine Art Gallery held a retrospective, "Constructivism in Russia:
Photography 1923-1936," featuring photgraphs by Alexander Rodchenko,
El Lissitzky, Boris Ignatovich, Nikolai Kubeyev, Max Albert, Georgi Zelma,
and a series of photographs from the Constructivist architectural school
Vkhutemas.
-Compiled by Susan T enneriello
13
BOOKS RECEIVED
D ~ b a l a , Jacek. Mechanizm. Tragifarsa. 64 pages. Lublin: Norbertium, 1997.
Play in fifteen short scenes with prologue and epilogue.
Gladkov, Aleksandr. Meyerhold Speaks. Meyerhold Rehearses. Translated,
edited, and with a fifty page introduction by Alma Law. 263 pages. The
Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997. Includes Selected
Bibliography, Glossary of Names and Places, Index and 42 plates.
Kott, Jan. Aloes. 143 pages. Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1997.
A collection that reprints twenty short reviews and essays dating from 1962
to the present, mostly about drama and theatre.
Kott, Jan. Kadysz. Strony o Tadeuszu Kantorze. (Kaddish. Essays on
Tadeusz Kantor). 57 pages. Gdansk: Slowo/obraz terytoria, 1997. Includes
eight photographs.
Osinski, Zbigniew, ed. O$rodek Badaii Tw6rczo$ci ]erzego Grotowskiego i
Poszukiwaii Teatralno-Kulturowych 1990-czerwiec 1996. (The Centre of
Studies on Jerzy Grotowski's Work and of the Cultural and Theatrical
Research 1990-June 1996). In Polish and English. 102 pages. Wrodaw:
Osrodek Badan Tw6rczosci J erzego Grotowskiego i Poszukiwan T eatralno-
Kulturowych, 1996. Includes Osinski's "The Cultural Centres of the 90s,"
"Chronicle of the Centre's public activities in the years 1990-1996,"
"Cultural events and seminars on Jerzy Grotowski, the Laboratory Theatre
and our Centre out of Wrodaw," plus Index of events and materials and
Index of Names.
Senelick, Laurence. The Chekhov Theatre. A Century of the Plays in
Performance. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Senelick, Laurence, ed. Russian Comedies of the Nikolaian Era, translated and
with an introduction by the editor. 161 pages. Amsterdam: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1997. Includes Her First Night by Dmitry Lensky;
Fantasy by "Kozma Prutkov;" Luncheon with the Marshal of Nobility by Ivan
Turgenev; and Pazukhin 's Death by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.
14
Stephan, Halina. Transcending the Absurd: Drama and Prose of Slawomir
Mroiek. 285 pages. Amsterdam/ Atlanta, GA: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1997.
Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics 28. English language version of
Halina Stephan's book listed in SEEP vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring 1997).
Segel, Harold B., ed. Polish Romantic Drama. 283 pages. Selected and with
an introduction by the editor. The three plays in English translation are
Adam Mickiewicz, Forefathers' Eve, Part Ill; Zygmunt Krasinski, The Un-
Divine Comedy; and Juliusz Slowacki, Fantazy. Includes a Selected
Bibliography and fifteen photographs.
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. Country House, translated and with an
introduction by Daniel Gerould. 59 pages. The Netherlands: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1997. Includes a Chr onology of Witkiewicz's life, an
Appendix: Selections from Witkiewicz's theory of Pure Form in the
Theatre, and a Selected Bibliography.
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy. Dramaty I, edited by Janusz Degler. 671
pages. Warsaw: Paristwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1996. Includes plays
1893-1920, notes to Juvenilia by Anna Miciriska; Notes to Plays and a sixty-
two page essay on Witkiewicz's Dramatic Works by Janusz Degler, as well
as one photograph, ten paintings in color, and ten charcoal drawings.
15
"I WAS ALWAYS IN THE EPICENTER OF WHATEVER WAS
GOING ON ... ":
AN INTERVIEW WITH WANDAJAKUBOWSKA
Stuart Liebman
The following is an edited and shortened transcript of an interview
with the pioneering Polish film maker and Auschwitz survivor conducted
in her apartment in Ulica Bracka, Warsaw, Poland, on February 1 and 2,
1997. Many thanks to Professor Krystyna Prendowska for interpreting Mrs.
Jakubowska's remarks.-SL
SL: My questions will focus on your film Ostatni Etap [The Last Stop, 1948],
which was one of the first fiction films to confront the enormity of the
Holocaust. But since this film so importantly depends on your own
experiences at Auschwitz and your political convictions, perhaps we should
start with some background. How did you come to be at Auschwitz?
WJ: When the Germans came in I was a First Secretary of the Socialist Party
and the commandant of a large district in Warsaw. The Germans came in on
the fifth of September [ 1939].
SL: How were you captured?
WJ: Every house had a little garden-we called them "Japanese" gardens
because they were so small, only a meter and a half square-in which we
grew potatoes. In one of the gardens some stupid boys hid weapons. The
Gestapo, which was not a political party but a band of murderers-they
only liked to kill-discovered them. The Gestapo simply took everyone
who grew food in the garden to Pawiak prison. It was only then that they
learned who I was. It was a very nice life. We could receive parcels! Most of
those who served there were drunks and drug addicts. When I was brought
to the Chief of the prison, it was a strange meeting. He was lying with his
head on a table, drunk, smashed. He was the "flower of the German
nation"-an alcoholic and drug addict! It was a bad situation for me, but
there was a young boy who liked me. We got some towels and tied the
drunk SS man to the armchair, but in such a way that he could easily free
himself when he woke up. The little soldier felt I had done very well, and
he said that he would take me to the best cell in Pawiak as a reward. It was
a small cell, where laundry was done for the Polish service of Pawiak. I was
16 Slavic and Ease European Performance Vol. 17, No. 3
a working woman. I was not watched. It was paradise!
SL: So why did paradise end?
WJ: They needed room for more prisoners so they collected some of us who
were already there and sent us to Auschwitz. It was on the 28th of April.
Everything in my life during the Occupation began on the 28th of April.
SL: And that was in ... ?
WJ: 1943. It was relatively late, after Stalingrad, after the Battle of Kursk,
too. The Germans were slowing down. The [train] cars in which we were
transported were very flimsy. It was easy to rip out a board and throw out
a message. I knew I was going to Auschwitz so I sent a note to my family.
You can see my tattoo, Number 43311. The reason the numbers become
smaller is because I was telling jokes to the person tattooing me!
SL: When you arrived at Auschwitz, were you assigned to a block of
women political prisoners?
WJ: Some time earlier, comrades from the Socialist Party had been taken
there. There was an organization called the Auschwitz group which worked
underground. I immediately became part of the group. The people already
knew me, and they sent a note saying that everything would be ok. They
gave me a loaf of bread and a sausage. I worked to take care of military
invalids, partisans, who were in the camp.
SL: Were there any Jews left in the camps when you arrived?
WJ: There were not many to choose from anymore. They knew who was
Jewish. Part of the Jewish intelligentsia was not circumcised, but the
religious people were taken right away. Jews were called from the roll and
sent to the gas chambers. It was terrible. The smokestacks were going all the
time. We knew what was going on.
SL: You were later shifted to another camp.
WJ: The Germans needed a photographer to take pictures of plants. They
wanted to cultivate a plant from Asia Minor which could be used to produce
natural rubber for tires. My SS man, who never spoke to me in any language
17
18
but French, told me that they were opening a natural rubber plantation not
too far from their installations in Minsk. They needed scientists to construct
conditions equal to those in Minsk. On the plantations the living conditions
were better-there were even some eminent French Jewish scientists
working there! There were barracks with windows, beds, and pillows, and
the risk of typhus that was killing everybody in the camps was less. Not
thirteen on each level; everyone had their own bed. There were showers and
the place was disinfected. I did beautiful photographs of the plant leaves.
SL: Where did you learn photography? Were you trained before the war?
WJ: As a film director, I had to learn photography. I would not have gotten
a diploma if I could not take good pictures. It was easy to be accepted as a
film maker [in the 1930s]. I learned by loving the cinema. Cinema was
something absolutely fantastic. There was a horrible little machine made by
Zeiss called a "Kinamo." The reels couldn't go over 2.01 meters in length.
My first film was a short poetic film. The second was a documentary about
a bazaar. The third was half fiction, half documentary, a little narrative.
SL: The shots, I suppose, were very short because the reels were so short?
WJ: Yes. The films were shown in the theaters as shorts before the features.
SL: Do your early films exist?
WJ: No, they must have been destroyed when Warsaw was destroyed during
the war. But I also made a long film, Nad Niemnem [On the Banks of the
Niemen, 1939], before the war. It was based on a famous novel by a very
progressive nineteenth- century leftist [Eliza Orzeszkowa] about a conflict
in a manor between the aristocracy and lower gentry. The landscapes and
shots of the river were fabulous. Now, the area is not even in Poland
anymore ... After the war, you know, the country walked toward the
West. The film actually never had a premiere. The Germans invaded and it
never took place.
SL: Did the Russians liberate you from Auschwitz when they overran it in
January 1945?
WJ: Well, when the Russians were very close to Auschwitz, the Germans
transferred us to Ravensbriick. In Ravensbriick, the SS did not have much
19
to say. There were so many prisoners and the Germans knew they were
losing the war. The Russians had already killed the "flower" of the SS. Now
they were made up of workers and people close to retirement. One was a
wealthy landowner who had a lot of money. One old retiree, who could
hardly walk himself, came to me and asked me to carry his gun because he
was tired! That was a comic part of the story!
SL: When were you finally liberated from Ravensbriick?
WJ: Once again on the 28th of April [1945], but we had already liberated
ourselves some days before. We were supposed to be taken to Sweden, but
I had children in Warsaw and I wanted to go there, so I started eastward. We
traveled by night. The country was not really ruled by the SS anymore. It
was really a comedy during the last month!
SL: When you returned from the war did you make any more short films
or did you move directly into feature films?
WJ: No, my first film [after the war] was Ostatni Etap. I was the only film
director who had been in the camps. All the women in Poland knew that I
was a film director. In the camps, women would bring me news and I kept
it all in my head; I couldn't write anything down. Then I went on the road
and talked to the inmates about their experiences, gathering oral
documentation for my film. Later, I used German documents about the
camps in my film The End of Our World [1964], a much better film than
Ostatni Etap. The English, who are the best film critics in the
world-professional, objective, the best-agree. But you Americans will have
to see Ostatni Etap until the end of your lives.
SL: Because it is the only film distributed in the U.S.?
WJ: Yes, but this film was also received warmly everywhere.
SL: When you made the film, you worked closely on the script with a
woman named Gerda Schneider. Who was she?
WJ: She was a German Communist who was in Moabit prison in Berlin for
twelve years. After that, the Germans sent her to Auschwitz to organize a
camp for women. But she was still a decent person. She organized what was
best for women.
20 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 17, No. 3
SL: You met her in the camp?
WJ: Yes. We became friends. I learned German from her because she never
knew any other language. When I left the camp, I therefore spoke German.
We left the camp together and she remained in Poland for a while. We had
to write a script. She knew much more than I did. But then somebody
didn't like the fact that she was German and so they gave her a week to go.
She went to Hamburg. It must have been '48 or '49. We used to meet in
Berlin, but we couldn't work together anymore.
SL: Yesterday, I went to the Filmoteka Narodowa to look at the script. The
original was called "'FKA, 'Frauenkonzentrationslager Auschwitz."
WJ: Yes, there was a script, a novella, all of which can be copied.
SL: You wrote the script with Schneider in 1946?
WJ: It was written in my head as the girls from Auschwitz came to me with
their stories. The character Martha, for example, was based on a Belgian
J ewess named Mala. I never saw her, but the whole story of her love and
escape was no fantasy of mine; it was based on true stories. This was a "para-
documentary." All the characters were real, not fictional.
SL: Did you know personally some of the main characters or were they
composites based on stories you heard?
WJ: Some of them I knew, the Gypsy, for one, and the Kapo woman. But
the rest were from stories.
SL: When you started to make the film, did you have to get it approved by
Film Polski [the official government-supported film production
company-SL]?
WJ: First, they bought the script and paid me a mountain of money. Then
came a year-and-a-half-long war about the production. People said that it
needed [Aleksander] Ford or Pabst [to direct it], that it was too difficult for
me, a woman. I was one of the first women directors; now there are many
in India, in Korea. Women are strong!
SL: So you had to fight for the right to make your script into a movie?
21
WJ: Yes.
SL: How did you finally win the right to make the movie?
WJ: Citizens could pass through the practically unmarked border with
Russia and get to Moscow. That's what I did. The Minister of Soviet
Cinematography was an absolutely gorgeous Georgian named Mishka [i.e.,
Mikhail] Kalatozov who [later] made The Cranes are Flying (1957]. When I
went to his room I almost fainted; he had the kind of beauty that made you
collapse on the floor! He really helped me. He read the script and he cried;
he cried so much, the cleaning woman had to come to clean the floor! Then
he sent the script to the Minister of Culture Zhdanov, who also cried. He
sent it to Stalin, but I don't know whether he cried. I left Moscow. I needed
a cameraman and someone for the special effects. Then the entire Russian
Army in Poland was put at my disposition. I therefore had a very easy time
making the film.
SL: The chief cameraman, Boris Monastirsky, was Russian.
WJ: Yes, he had a documentary style, which is what I wanted, someone who
could create shots on the border of documentary.
SL: Did the Russians also pay for the film?
WJ: The film was made almost free of charge. Only the actors were paid.
Many of the people in the film were Red Army personnel. Because the
Russian Army participated it was as cheap as red borscht! If we had to pay,
we would not have been able to do it. All the mass scenes were [composed
with] three hundred women walking in front of the camera. All the
inhabitants of Auschwitz wanted to be there and would work for nothing.
We simply dressed them up.
SL: So you actually started making your film in 1947?
WJ: We began on the sixteenth of July 1947 and we ended at the end of
September. The whole production lasted almost three months. It's not so
long for a fi lm like that.
SL: What is extraordinary about the film is that it was shot on location in
the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
22
WJ: Everything was shot on location in the barracks at Auschwitz, but the
stone barracks were brought from another camp on lorries and
reconstructed authentically. It was difficult to work in authentic interiors
but I wanted it that way.
SL: You reconstructed the camp hospital?
WJ: No, that was the camp hospital. The doctor's office was also authentic.
Mengele made inspections of the camp prisoners himself. He looked for
good bodies to work. He always had a little mirror looking at himself. He
was the only SS man who himself offered to go to Auschwitz because he said
he was going to do scientific research. He wanted to do research on twins.
It was cosmic idiocy on Mengele's part; it was far from science! He also
looked for pregnant women. When one gave birth, he would inject the baby
with phenol.
SL: That is recalled in one of the gruesome early scenes in the film. The
character of the German commandant in your film-was he also based on
a real person?
WJ: He was very much like the real one. He was a clown, he made jokes.
SL: And the blonde commandant?
WJ: All German women fell in love with Hitler when he came to power.
One beautiful women from the Tyrol sent him love letters with
photographs so that Eva Braun became furious. She said to Hitler, "Do
something to that woman! I've had enough of those photographs!" So he
made her a commandant in Auschwitz. That is the way he saved his
relationship with Eva Braun!
SL: And was the scene at the end, in which the character Martha Weiss
throws the commandant off the gallows, based on fact too?
WJ: There were certain unauthentic details. The real-life Martha was a
Belgian named Mala who decided to escape with a young Frenchman. She
was liked by the blonde commandant. When they caught her, they hanged
her in the great square. This happened before I got to Auschwitz. It was
already a legend. Mala only made a short speech. Then they put her on a
garbage cart and took her to the crematorium to be burned. That was the
23
24
real story. But we decided to give a chance to the bombers of the United
States. At Telluride, in front of a very anti-Hollywood audience, when the
bombers flew over there was silence at first, but then they shrieked with
happiness.
SL: Do you remember the Hungarian critic Bela Balazs?
WJ: He was very well disposed to me.
SL: He was very concerned that Martha not die at the end of the film. Do
you try to show that she lived or did she die?
WJ: Well, she cuts her wrists with a knife that she was given.
SL: It would seem, then, that Balazs made several mistakes interpreting the
film. For example, he thought the planes at the end were Russian.
WJ: Well, he does not seem to have known much about planes. I needed
some shots of planes, but the Americans would not even meet with my
representative. So what to do? We went to the archives and found one shot
of the dive bombers and that is what we used.
SL: So the planes are American, not Russian?
WJ: Yes, although there might have been Russian planes in another scene.
SL: The other thing Balazs wanted very much was that Martha live. In a
letter to you [published in SEEP, Fall 1996], he said that for the export
market it was important that she live, and that symbolically, it was
important that she live so that people would remember that the liberation
occurred.
WJ: Americans like happy endings.
SL: When you were shooting the film, did you set up how and where the
actors were to stand? Did you set up the camera placements?
WJ: I first did mini-sketches [of each scene]. I then did rehearsals with the
actors in a room in another location. I asked them to learn the text . That
was the first phase. Then we went to the camp. All the scenes were played
25
by actors. They knew what to say but they always said something else.
Nothing remained from the written text. Same topic, but they improvised.
I allowed this. They also improvised their actions and these ended up better
than the ones I sketched. They felt good in the roles. You have to give the
maximum freedom to the actors.
SL: In keeping with your commitment to real locales, would it not have
been a good idea to use people who had really been there?
WJ: Yes, I tried this in the beginning, but they could not control their
performances. They said no, they could not stand it. They played so badly
that they couldn't be hired [for leading roles]. It would have ended up as a
parody. They overplayed the roles and created bad amateur theatre. I
couldn't allow this. But they worked very well in second and third tier
roles. For the major roles and episodes I had some forty actors.
SL: Who were the extras?
WJ: They were all inhabitants of the town Auschwitz. Whenever I called
they would come. They would end up standing five by five, just like in the
camp. A year ago, I went to Auschwitz and they still lined up five by five!
Each one had a striped uniform at home as a memory which they preserve
in mothballs. They came out from the town marching in fives. There is a
tradition there to preserve the memory.
SL: So you were finished the shooting at the end of September 1947? What
about the editing? How long did that take?
WJ: I am not a director so attached to the material. I made indications for
a cut to a young editor and he did the actual editing. Sometimes my favorite
scenes were shortened; then one of my good colleagues screened the film and
threw out some other scenes until it had a good length. How long is it?
SL: I have seen two versions. One is 110 minutes, which is the way it was
originally screened in New York in 1948. But there is also a longer one that
is 121 minutes. When you finished making the film, did you have to have
the film approved by the censor?
WJ: Not at all!
26
SL: Not when Stalin said it was okay, I guess!
WJ: There was nothing to question. The premiere was held in August 1948,
simultaneously in Poland and France. There was a showing for the big
political figures.
SL: And what was their reaction?
WJ: When the projectors began to run there was some commotion, then
total silence. There was a break between reels, but nobody spoke. Because
[Boleslaw] Bierut [then President of Poland-SL] did not say anything, no
one said anything. Suddenly Bierut started crying. He said it was a
wonderful film and took me in his arms. I knew Bierut from before the war.
Some people say that he was an evil man, but that is not true. He had a heart
of gold! But he didn't like his political opponents and I did not like them
either!
SL: What did the people at Film Polski, such as Jerzy Toeplitz and
Aleksander Ford, think about it?
WJ: Ford did not like it. He later made a good film called Ulica Graniczna
[Border Street, 1948] but he did not like my film. He was envious, though we
were very good friends. All the stories that say we were not are distortions.
His wife was a very good cook. We lived in the same building in Lodi. We
would sit down and quarrel for hours, almost hitting each other. Ford's wife
would separate us and say she had enough! He said he was angry, but there
was no antagonism between us. The older Toeplitz Qerzy] was for me, but
his son Krzysztof said that the only ones to get out of Auschwitz were
swine. The young man thought he knew everything! This was not very
pleasant for me and I ignored what he wrote. He later withdrew this
criticism.
SL: Looking back, do you think of Ostatni Etap as propaganda or as
independent and truthful?
WJ: Absolutely independent. I never asked the Russians what was supposed
to be in this film; they never influenced me. They could have decided not
to give me the army, but they did. We live in a country that is a little crazy;
we like to do what we want. Some countries were under Russian influence,
but we were not. They had their own big country to govern but they did
27
not govern here. We did it on our own. We chose Gomulka. Stalin hated
Gomulka but couldn't do anything about it.
SL: Well, quite early on, in 1948, he was able to do something about it! You
said already that you were a friend of Bierut, so what was your attitude
toward Gomulka in 1948, especially at the time around September when he
was removed from power?
WJ: It is hard to be a friend of someone so powerful, but I knew him from
before the war because he was always in prison. But the Russians were
always exchanging him for someone else. He was my closest crony on the
underground work during the Occupation.
SL: So in 1948 when Bierut and others pushed Gomulka aside, were you
upset?
WJ: Communists all over the world are known for quarreling with each
other, God knows what for! They lose because of that. I want to tell you
something awful. All the rightists did not like Communists because
Communists put them in prisons, but the people even today side with the
comeback of Communism. That's why the ex-Communists won the recent
elections. I had a couple come to fix my curtains yesterday. They told me
that when they were younger they had wonderful paid vacations. They slept
in a nice hotel; they were well cared for; they were taken on trips
throughout Poland. Now, when they want to send their children on a trip
they have to have millions of zlotys, so their daughter plays in the yard in
front of the house. These are arguments you cannot refute: people had
significant help from the state.
SL: Did the success of your film make the rest of your career easier or was
it made more difficult?
WJ: I had no problems creating films either before or after. There is a myth
that success is sometimes hard to take. Such conditions as Communists had
we never had afterwards. There was no problem of money. If the topic was
right and interesting, there were no problems. The state gave money,
transportation. The same happened with theatre and with literature. They
were never better afterwards. Culture was under the state's tutelage. Of
course they wanted to do all kinds of propaganda films but if you didn't
want to do it they went along.
SL: Do you have any thoughts about your commitments to the
Communists now?
WJ: Yes, entirely positive. I am a fierce and unrelenting Communist. Look
at me, I am not ashamed. I am a "Commie." I like America and it likes me,
but I am a staunch communist! Communist leaders were honest, rough, but
honest. They put people in prison. Nineteen people were shot including a
boy who worked in my agency. I cannot forgive them for that. He had been
involved in some sort of illegal political resistance movement. Only nineteen
corpses in a nation of forty million, that's not so terrifying! Remember, it
was a civil war. There were acts of terrorism during the war. In the United
States there was also a Civil War, far worse!
SL: I am not accusing anyone! Do you like Palester's music for your film?
Some find it overbearing.
WJ: Yes, I like it because I really like the entire film.
SL: Well, it seems that the film has stood up very well. When the film
played several times in New York last Spring [i.e., 1996], the entire Walter
Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center with perhaps 500-600 seats was filled.
WJ: Yes, it is always full. My film was received very well in France before
it went to the U.S. A society of approximately 150 people was
created-Picasso and Irene Joliot-Curie were in it. There were people in it
from France, Belgium, Holland too. Picasso was my friend and he often
invited me to come with him when he made speeches about the film. The
only country that didn't show it right away was Great Britain because
Gandhi was in a concentration camp for two years. They created such camps
in the colonies and they did not want young people to raise questions. More
recently, it had a great reception when it was screened at Telluride. I loved
Colorado. I was there twice. I was in New York two or three times. I also
spent four weeks in San Francisco.
SL: You have had a long, pioneering career with many significant
achievements. And you also never avoided advocacy of political views you
believed in, it seems, passionately.
WJ: For my whole life, whatever was going on, I had to get involved with
it. I was seven or eight when the Russian Revolution exploded. We lived in
29
Moscow. Bullets were flying over the heads of Bolsheviks. My mother
thought that the best place to sit was under the table. I am not sure that was
the best idea, but I am still working all right, so ... I was always in the
epicenter of whatever was going on.
TARKOVSKY'S ODES TO ... JOY?
Roger Hillman
NOSTALGHIA (1983)
Over sepia shots of a Russian landscape into which figures spill
to form a statuesque tableau, an unaccompanied woman's voice intones
"the keening death-chant of Russian peasant women."
1
This sound then
intertwines with, before yielding to, the opening ('Requiem aeternam')
section of the Verdi Requiem. The counterpointed styles and melodies
anticipate the twin pulls on the main character of his Russian homeland
and present Italian domicile, as well as providing simultaneously a
musical flashback and flashforward. They also, in the seamless acoustic
progression from one to the other, anticipate the prominent theme of
linguistic and cultural translation and its limits. This problem is taken up
some fifteen minutes into the film by the main figure, the
poet/musicologist Gorchakov, and his Italian guide/interpreter Eugenia.
Like all art, he claims, poetry is untranslatable. To her objection, "But
music ... ," he replies by singing a Russian song which she fails to
recognize and which combines the two art forms mentioned so far.
The cultural divides are taken much further when Gorchakov
suggests the frontiers between states must be broken down, but unlike
the invocation of great names from both Italian and Russian art, this
suggestion seems to remain totally abstract. And at a political level it
does. But further into the film Gorchakov enters the abode of Domenico,
himself a case of cultural translation in being an Italian version of that
Russian topos, the holy fool (and aptly portrayed as something of a
Doppelganger to Gorchakov). His summons across the threshold is
accompanied by the passage of the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony which immediately precedes the breaking of the double fugue,
where Schiller's text speaks with confidence of a Father enthroned above
the stars. The final headlong rush of the music is cut off before the joyous
embrace of the millions in the text, which nonetheless seems to be the
foreshadowed removal of national barriers at a still higher level, the one
which ultimately interests Tarkovsky.
2
The divine is contemplated but
not attained, a state consistently anticipated in the director's oeuvre and
only realized in the largely frame-breaking epiphanies at the end of his
films. Beyond the nostalgia for one's homeland signaled by the film's
31
title, there is a more diffuse nostalgia for a European humanism embodied
here by its most famous musical/textual statement by Beethoven and
Schiller.
But the music is reprised, at a slightly more advanced stage of the
finale of the symphony, when Domenico takes up cudgels against the
evils of the time, an Old Testament figure atop a statue of Marcus
Aurelius in Rome. His onlookers form a frozen tableau, with only the
dog seeming to sense what is imminent, the madhouse mise-en-scene
resonating with Caligari and The Conformist. As Domenico incinerates
himself, the invoked musical accompaniment finally materializes, but
with mocking distortion at both beginning and end, a fairground
reduction of some of the loftiest music ever written. But between these
points of conscious ludicrousness, the final chorus is unleashed with full
clarity, the text coming to an ignominious end on the word "Bruder" in
the key phrase "Alle Menschen werden Bruder." The scene undercuts any
notion of brotherhood at a broad level. But the immediately following
sequence, in which Gorchakov manages at his third attempt to fulfil the
task assigned him by Domenico of carrying a candle across the thermal
springs, realizes the ideal in (and confines it to) a more intimate sphere. In
the hands of a BufiueP the self-immolation scene would totally negate
idealism; Tarkovsky is unique in demolishing only the realization, not
the substance of the vision. In a similar sense Beethoven here survives the
caricatured rendition of his music, and the Ninth remains a humanistic
icon, although nothing more focussed than that.
The successful sheltering of the candle flame across the waters
seems to snuff out Gorchakov's own candle of life. As he reaches the
opposite bank, Verdi's Requiem returns. The musical arch is completed
when, with Russian farmhouse now framed majestically by Romanesque
architecture, the female singer of the opening frames returns with her
timeless song.
STALKER (1979)
In a key scene just over halfway through this film, the usually
garrulous Professor and Writer are asleep, but they awake in the course of
Stalker's declamation of Luke's version of the appearance of Jesus to two
disciples on the road to Emmaus. The rendition trails off at the point
where one disciple is identified as Cleopas, as the camera pans to the now
awake Professor. In the biblical account, following the excerpt chosen by
Tarkovsky, Jesus berates his listeners for not realizing that Christ's
suffering was a necessary prelude to His glory and retraces the preparing
of His path found in the scriptures from Moses on. The apparent paradox
of suffering leading to hope is repeated at the end of the film by Stalker's
wife who, transfigured from her earlier resistance to his return to the
Zone into the moral prophet of the film, delivers Stalker from
momentary despair and utters the film's final wisdom and benediction
before the coda of their miraculous daughter (whose telekinetic faith is
capable of moving mountains at the level of the microcosm). Thus the
elided section of Luke is nonetheless implied as part of the narrative arch
of the film.
As in the Gospel according to Luke, the distant prehistory of the
Resurrection is also elided, but it is possible to view the following
"sermon" by the Stalker as its equivalent. He addresses the Professor and
the Writer in the following words: "You were talking about the meaning
of our life, the unselfishness of art. Now take music. It's connected least
of all with reality. Or, if connected, then it's without ideas, it's merely
empty sound, without associations. Nevertheless, music miraculously
penetrates your very soul. What chord responds in us to its harmonies,
transforming it into a source of supreme delight and uniting us .. . and
shattering us?"
In a less musically sparse film this speech would sound like a
programmatic utterance, but the camera work should alert us to its
limits. During the above speech the camera, in a slow dolly shot, traverses
the expanse of water between what (we assume) is the bank where the
Stalker is standing and the far bank. Because the surface of the water is
glass-like, the camera skims it at the section "It's connected ... without
associations," the screen seems to be correspondingly blank but for a
slight increase in the lighting level. The miraculous penetration of the
soul by music proclaimed in the text is matched by the beauty on which
the camera comes to rest: the opposite bank and above all its reflection in
the water. An unmediated shot of this natural tableau would have been
far less arresting. Thus the apparent intervening blankness is necessary for
the final effect! Yet it is not only Tarkovsky's visuals for Stalker' s
expounding of an artistic credo that qualify its logic, but also his handling
of music within the film itself.
Critics draw attention to the paring down of music in
Tarkovsky's later films. In Stalker there is some original music, by
Eduard Artemiev, which contributes to the setting of mood and
atmosphere that is largely left to mise-en-scene and lighting. But beyond
that, little critical attention has been paid to anything except the muffled
33
tones of the "Ode to Joy" at the film's conclusion,
5
whose significance
cannot be gauged in isolation. For it is but one of four musical stations of
the Cross in the spiritual odyssey of the film, the last of a sequence of
references to the musical canon which functions as the cultural memory
of Western civilization.
Three of the four references are obscured by the rhythmic
propulsion of train-wheels, their purposefulness implying a sense of
direction we never witness. The first reference comes after Stalker's
announcement that he is returning to the Zone, whereupon his wife
curses him and writhes on the floor. Like the other extracts, it is no more
than a snatch of music, because that is all that is necessary: contrary to
Stalker's credo given, it conveys immediate associations. The music is the
Pilgrims' Chorus section of Wagner's Tannhauser overture; it lends the
latest stage of Stalker's quest a sanctity which at this stage eludes his wife.
The second reference comes when Stalker's familiarity with the
terrain of the Zone frustrates his companions, who see no reason for his
caution and incline to take more direct paths to the Room. As the Writer,
back to camera, follows the Professor, a snatch of music is whistled. Its
source, as we surmise when the Writer ultimately turns but still betrays
no facial movement, seems to be Stalker.
6
What he whistles features in
The Sacrifice (1986), "Erbarme dich, mein Gott" from Bach's St. Matthew
Passion, where it serves as a frame. This musical reference follows Peter's
threefold denial of Christ, whose prophecy he has vehemently rejected.
Here the aptness of the music and text is clear, as Stalker exhorts his
companions to humility.
The transition from the Zone back to normality, from the magic
golden pond in front of the Room to the sepia hues of domesticity, is
eased by a soundbridge of the recurring train-wheels. Beneath these, with
similarly relentless rhythm, a snippet of Ravel's Bolero can be discerned.
Again the mere suggestion of this composition suffices, precisely because
of its associations: after the rigors of the inner journey, it signals the
return to the garish world of fleshpots. But this music is least connected
to the narrative reality. The austere return to sepia before the celebratory
use of color in the final sequence denies all gaudiness, while the tortured
physicality of Stalker's wife's writhings before his departure have yielded
to a serene spirituality that sustains her. Indeed, one must wonder what
degree of irony is cast on the whole enterprise of the quest by the
spiritual development of the wife and the exceptional gifts of the
daughter, both outside the Zone.
The final example crowns the panorama of the Western musical
tradition, completing the film's elliptical four-movement symphony with
"the" fourth movement, that of Beethoven's Ninth. As the table
reverberates to yet another passing train, the glass and jar, which Stalker's
daughter had set in motion at will, shake on the spot, but do not
otherwise move. Just as the magic of her telekinetic ability prevails over
the more prosaic phenomenon-a further indication that "What is weak
is good: hardness is closest to death" -the musical examples, while they
do not prevail acoustically, do so spiritually. Three of the four are
distorted through juxtapositioning with the train-wheels, and the fourth
through being whistled. But they all assert cultural memory, enact a mini-
musical drama of their own, in four allusive movements, and culminate in
the ultimate expression of "uniting us," as Stalker's musings had
formulated it, the "Aile Menschen werden Bruder" section of the Ninth.
The new universal harmony
7
that preoccupied Tarkovsky in his later
years here finds its expression in the pinnacle of musical humanism. The
Ninth may be barely acoustically heeded, but it is a voice in the industrial,
ecological, above all spiritual wilderness that is not to be silenced. The
nature of the quest in Stalker seems to combine a latter day Holy Grail
with Kafka's Vor dem Gesetz (Before the Law), with the gatekeeper (who
even has a Tartar beard!) being one's own heeding of inner voices. The
object of the quest, too dazzling to contemplate directly, can still be
intimated (the unquenchable glow through the door of the Law in Kafka)
via a spirituality, mediated here by music, and elsewhere in Tarkovsky by
literature or painting.
The music culminates in the "Ode to Joy" section of the Ninth,
which since then has indeed been elevated to the position of European
anthem in the new, post-1989 Europe. Stalker can be read as an
anticipation not just of Chernobyl, but of much else that has followed. I
should like to conclude by profiling Tarkovsky's two films treated here
against contemporary filmmakers of the New German Cinema. In a
purely German context the progression Wagner-Bach-Beethoven, with a
diversion to Ravel, would have quite different associations, the very
element which Stalker's programmatic utterance denies but the above
analysis strives to affirm. That Fassbinder (The Marriage of Maria Braun),
Kluge (Die Patriotin), Syberberg (Hitler: a Film from Germany) and Helke
Sander (Redupers) re-examine the Ninth as part of their broader
reassessment of identity points to a pathology of national psyche from
which non-German examples such as Bergman (To joy), Makavejev (Man
is not a Bird) and Tarkovsky remain exempt. Both axes yield
35
archaeologies of reception, the first via the overpowering intervention of
Nazism (e.g. the work's command performance for Hitler's birthday in
1942 by the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwangler), the second via
more pan-European resonances to which German cinema (and German
society) would as a utopian wish like to return.
With many different gradations of detail, the "Ode to Joy" has
always incarnated utopian aspirations, the holy madness of this being
exemplified by its signature theme status for Domenico in Nostalghia.
These two films of Tarkovsky, the problematic Slavophile, achieve what
was denied the German equivalent of Westernizers: the transvaluation of
the pinnacle of German humanism, Beethoven's Ninth, into European
idealism.
NOTES
I. Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry, trans. Natasha Ward (faber and faber:
London and Boston, 1989), 119.
2. Andrei's suggestion for the dissolving of frontiers is indeed, as Johnson and Petrie term it,
"both irrelevant and impractical" at the "lower" level, but this doesn't exhaust the film's
concerns. See Vida T. Johnson and Graham Petrie, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual
Fugue (Indiana University Press: Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1994), 163.
3. For a different comparison between the two directors see MarkLe Fanu, The Cinema of
Andrei Tarkovsky (BFI: London, 1987), 106-07.
4. For a complementary reading of this scene, see Petr Kral (trans. Kevin Windle), "Pages
from the Past: Tarkovsky, or the Burning House, Part Ill," Slavic and East European
Performance 16.2 (Spring 1996), 50.
5. The scant references to music are the one qualification to the otherwise finely nuanced
analysis of Tarkovsky's soundtracks in Andrea Truppin, "And Then There Was Sound: The
Films of Andrei Tarkovsky," in Sound Theory/ Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (Routledge:
New York and London, 1992), 235-48. In particular, my own analysis diverges from hers
with regard to t he function and source of music at the conclusion of Stalker: "The train roars
by, obscenely blaring strains of orchestral music and filling the previously tranquil room
with violence." (248)
6. But here as elsewhere Andrea Truppin's warning holds: "Ambiguity in sound stems not
only from the inability to ascertain a sound's source, but also from uncertainty as to who, if
anyone, in the diegesis is hearing the sound and in what state of mind." (ibid., 239)
7. See Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, trans. Kitty Hunter-
Blair (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1989), 204-06.
The Third International Gombrowicz Festival
Allen J. Kuharski
The third biannual International Gombrowicz Festival in Radom,
Poland, took place June 11-15, 1997, sponsored as in years past by the city's
Teatr Powszechny under the artistic direction of Wojciech As
in the previous two festivals in 1993 and 1995, the program included a
combination of recent productions of Gombrowicz's works from both
Poland and abroad, augmented with art exhibits, film screenings, and music
or dance concerts, as well as an international symposium featuring panels of
critics, scholars, translators, and theatre artists with an interest in the
playwright's work. As in its previous incarnations, the Festival's events
were overseen by Rita Gombrowicz, the playwright's widow and literary
executor, performing the function of "honorary patroness" of the
proceedings.
Appropriate to Gombrowicz's status as Poland's most
cosmopolitan playwright, the Festival programs have consistently proven
genuinely international affairs in spite of the somewhat surprising emergence
of Radom as the event's venue. The complexities of funding and cultural
politics in post-Soviet Poland have combined with strongly committed local
governmental and corporate sponsorship and energetic and
visionary leadership to result in the Festival's evolution outside of the
country's more visible cultural centers. Radom, however, does offer the
advantage of being near the pre-World War II homes of Gombrowicz's
immediate fami ly-dose enough to suffer from the playwright's bruising
dismissals of the city in his Diary as the very embodiment of shabby Polish
provinciality. Nevertheless, the location in Radom permitted guests of the
1993 festival to visit the one surviving Gombrowicz house (his brother
Jerzy's estate at Wsola, now a state home for retarded adults), along with the
now abandoned, though originally more elegant, home of his youthful
would-be fiancee (who appears as a character in his play History). Radom
was also the postwar home of Jerzy Gombrowicz after the family's double
dispossession at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets in the wake of World
War II.
The resident company of Radom's Teatr Powszechny has
consistently risen to the occasion with a series of outstanding stage
adaptations of Gombrowicz's fiction: Premeditated Murder (1993, directed
by Zbigniew Brzoza); Cosmos (1995, directed by Waldemar Smigasiewicz);
Attorney Kraykowski 's Dancer (1997, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski).
37
Ladislaus Gonas Wahlstedt) and Prince Himalay {Martin Lange) in Replica of
Stockholm's production of Witold Gombrowicz's Operetta, directed by Jurek
Sawka. Third International Gombrowicz Festival, Radom, Poland.
Warlikowski's production opened and set the tone for the 1997 festival as
a whole with its baroque theatricalism and clearly postmodern sensibility.
While controversial with critics and audiences alike, Warlikowski's operatic
reading of Gombrowicz's compact short story displayed the virtuosity of
both his own direction and of t he rich artistic and technical resources of
Teatr Powszechny-which like many of Poland's regional companies has
recently developed a double program of large-scale musical comedies on its
main stage combined with less commercial fare such as this on its "second
stage." Warlikowski's production was, however, undeniably "main stage"
in effect and locale, using every inch of the theatre's backstage, wings, and
house to embody the tortured inner life of its "dancer" protagonist in his
quest to inscribe his memory indelibly in the mind of both the audience and
the arrogant attorney Kraykowski. Warlikowski, like many of the younger
generation of directors featured in this year's festival, exploited
Gombrowicz's complex and perverse erotic dimension to its fullest,
constructing a complex masque of consciousness, identity, and sexuality as
performance.
Warlikowski's sensibility found its counterpart in the work of
other young directors from Germany and Sweden. Karin Beier's production
of Gombrowicz's play Ivana, Princess of Burgundia from Hamburg's
Deutsches Schauspielhaus was the first German production to appear at any
of the Radom festivals, in spite of Gombrowicz's consistent popularity in
the German state theatres. Beier's production with its soaring all-white set
and sleekly polished surface was clearly from a different tradition than
Gombrowicz production in Poland, yet revealed a keen appreciation of the
playwright's wit, erotic dimension, and anarchistic intelligence. Beier aptly
cast and interpreted the leading characters of the eccentric commoner lvona
and the iconoclastic Prince Philip, whose encounter provides the dramatic
spark for the play. Wearing a provocatively short cotton print skirt with
obviously no panties or bra underneath, Caroline Ebner's Ivona possessed
a feral intelligence and unpredictability in marked contrast to the play's
fashionably decadent court. Ebner's performance provided the needed spark
for Herbert Fritsch to play Prince Philip's obsessive interest in Ivona, which
catalyzes his own restless and latently rebellious energies. The psychological
dance of Ivona and Philip found its unexpected culmination in the two
characters stripping naked in the last act-with Ivona thus gaining stature
and the chicly transgressive Prince clearly diminished.
Jurek Sawka's Swedish production of Gombrowicz's last play,
Operetta, proved the Festival's most admired and discussed entry. Presented
by Sawka's Stockholm-based company Replica, this production (retitled in
39
40
Members of cast in Replica of Stockholm's production of Witold
Gombrowicz's Operetta, directed by Jurek Sawka. Third International
Gombrowicz Festival, Radom, Poland.
Albertine (Sandra Grindeback) and Count Charmant Gohan Ehn) in Replica of
Stockholm's production of Witold Gombrowicz's Operetta, directed by Jurek
Sawka. Third International Gombrowicz Festival, Radom, Poland.
41
Swedish Som om em "Operett", or As If Operetta) marked the completion of
a new cycle of Swedish productions of Gombrowicz's major plays over the
last two years-which included Ingmar Bergman's 1995 production of Ivona
at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Played back-to-back with a production of
Genet's 1he Blacks, Sawka employed the same multiracial company, with the
play's servants and revolutionaries played by black actors wearing blackface
make-up-and with the mastermind of the coming revolution played by a
black actor (Lamine Dieng) in whiteface to conceal his true identity. Set in
a contemporary club scene-also a recurrent motif in the festival-the play's
aristocrats were portrayed as bored and ageing fashion victims dancing to
house music provided by one of the black servants functioning as disk
jockey. The production's greatest theatrical coup, however, was its
portrayal of Albertine, Gombrowicz's iconic image of youthful liberation
from the mature "forms" of ideology, gender, and even death itself. Sawka
cast a strikingly beautiful teen-aged actress of Sri Lankan origin in the role,
further complicating the production's image of mutating cultural identity,
and the choice provided a finely calibrated counterpoint to the play's
complex argument for the death of political ideology-a complexity doubled
by the director's cross-reading of the text with Genet. Sawka's production
successfully broke the mold of Operetta's theatrical and political history,
liberating the play from the apparently prerequisite referencing of the
operetta genre as well as of the politics of World War IT-while still holding
true to the spirit and meaning of Gombrowicz's text.
The 1997 festival also featured more conventional productions of
lvona (from Szczecin's Teatr Wsp6lczesny) and Operetta (a
Hungarian-language production from Cluj, Romania) of uneven quality, as
well as other adaptations of Gombrowicz's fiction. The young Polish
director Katarzyna Deszcz staged a vaguely Kantor-esque environmental
happening inspired by Gombrowicz's novel Trans-Atlantyk, following in the
wake of her recent touring production of Ivona (retitled Princess Sharon) in
Great Britain and other critically acclaimed work with London's Scarlet
Theatre. The first American production invited to the Festival was an
adaptation of the short story A Feast at Countess Kotlubay 's, directed by
Michael Hackett and produced by The Center for Theater Research and
Performance at UCLA. The production featured the first English
translation of the text (by dramaturg Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek) and a
performance by the Polish actress Barbara Krafft6wna in the title role.
Krafft6wna last appeared on stage performing Gombrowicz in Warsaw as
the eponymous anti-heroine in the world premiere of lvona, Princess of
Burgundia in 1957. In spite of Krafft6wna's obvious potential, the
,
-

...
~
Ivona (Caroline Ebner) and the cast of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus of Hamburg's
production of Witold Gombrowicz's lvona, Princess of Burgundia,
directed by Karin Beier. Third International Gombrowicz Festival, Radom, Poland.
......
-.to
production unfortunately remained essentially a laboratory
work-in-progress-though also perhaps a bellwether of bigger things to come
in the handling of Gombrowicz in the American theatre.
The 1995 festival was jointly dedicated to Gombrowicz and his
interwar contemporaries Bruno Schulz and Witkacy (Stanislaw Ignacy
Witkiewicz), three writers now typically linked by Polish critics and
cultural historians. The 1997 festival was originally intended to be similarly
dedicated both to Gombrowicz and his younger postwar contemporary,
playwright Slawomir Mrozek, who has recently resettled in Poland after
almost thirty years in emigration (roughly the same length of time as
Gombrowicz's own exile). Mrozek declined the festival's invitation to
attend, however, and so his name disappeared from the event's publicity.
Nevertheless, the festival included three productions of Mrozek's plays in
its program, including a sprightly production of his early play The Party by
three recent graduates of the Warsaw Theatre Academy, and a Hungarian
production of his recent play Love In The Crimea. Mrozek's play was well
served by the Hungarian company in spite of the text's disappointing
treatment of a very ambitious dramatic idea: the rise and fall of Soviet Russia
told in three acts (prerevolutionary, postrevolutionary, and post-Soviet) and
a parody of three distinct theatrical modes (Chekhovian realism, Socialist
realism, and postmodern absurdism). A production of another early
Mrozek one-act, Out At Sea, proved a popular favorite. This farcical
allegory of three survivors of a shipwreck stranded in a lifeboat was
performed on a raft in a local lake on a eerily foggy summer night with a
chorus of frogs in the background that would have pleased Aristophanes.
Though a short play performed after ten o'clock at night, the free
performance attracted a thousand or more audience members.
The festival's symposium featured as either speakers or respondents
prominent Polish critics of Gombrowicz's work such as Aleksander Fiut,
Janusz Majcherek, Zbigniew Majchrowski, Elzbieta Morawiec, and
Malgorzata Szpakowska. Foreign participants included a notable Swedish
contingent consisting of critic and literary historian Leonard Neuger,
translator Anders Bodegard, and critic and translator Jan Stolpe. Also in
attendance were critic and philosopher Francesco Maria Cataluccio from
Italy, composer Zygmunt Krauze from France, translator and critic Olaf
Ki.ihl from Germany, and Gombrowicz's close personal friend Alejandro
Russovich from Argentina. The United States was represented by
dramaturg and translator Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek and myself. As in
previous years, the symposium papers will appear in print in the Polish
journal Teatr, and a book version of the proceedings of all three symposia
..
--"'
,.
The Dancer Gacek Poniedzialek, downstage) and his one of his doubles
(Krzysztof Dziemaszkiewicz, upstage) in Teatr Powszechny of Radom's
production of Witold Gombrowicz's A ttomey Kraykowski 's Dancer, adapted
and directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. Third International Gombrowicz
Festival, Radom, Poland.
45

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If!
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s

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Mrs. Kraykowski (Danuta Dolecka), the Dancer Qacek Poniedzialek), Kraykowski
(Stanislaw Biczysko) and chorus in T eatr Powszechny of Radom's production of
Witold Gombrowicz's Attorney Kraykowski 's Dancer, adapted and directed by
Krzysztof Warlikowski. Third International Gombrowicz Festival, Radom, Poland.
to date has been proposed by a local publisher. The festival program also
included an exhibit of paintings and graphics inspired by Gombrowicz's life
and work by Italian artist Vladimiro Elvieri and a screening of French
journalist Michel Polac's famous 1969 television interview with
Gombrowicz shortly before the playwright's death. Polac both spoke in
connection with the screening and attended the festival's other events with
video camera in hand in preparation for a new program on Gombrowicz for
French television.
An inevitable topic of conversation at the festival was the
likelihood and nature of a fourth event in 1999, which would mark the
thirtieth anniversary of Gombrowicz's death. Rita Gombrowicz has
suggested the possibility of an international symposium in 1999 in Vence,
where the apartment she shared with Gombrowicz just before his death has
been converted into a museum in his honor. Whatever the shape of these
events to come, the 1997 festival amply demonstrated both the healthy
maturity of the Radom festival organization and the renewal taking place in
Gombrowicz production through the work of young directors in Poland
and abroad.
47
THEATRE IN CROATIA: THE 1997 SUMMER FESTIVALS IN
DUBROVNIK AND SPLIT
Allan Graubard and Caroline McGee
Since its premiere in 1950, the Dubrovnik Summer Festival has
been a yearly highpoint for Croatian culture. From then to now, numerous
performers have appeared in the charming squares and open air palaces of
the old city. Prior to the recent war, the festival had also become a
significant venue for the transmission of Western and Eastern European
theatre. Certainly Dubrovnik has thrived from such transmission,
celebrating itself and its rich historical legacy in the process. It is a tradition
that goes back many centuries. !he esteem that the citizens of Dubrovnik
hold for the theatre did not fail them during the time of Serbian attacks
against the city in 1991-1995. Performances were held under curfew and
general alert, so that the festival could continue despite the risk.
Dubrovnik, of course, has been celebrated as a world cultural
treasure. And while the attacks inflicted grave damage, igniting numerous
fi res through the old and new city, with international support Dubrovnik
is now almost entirely rebuilt. Yes, there are homes still pock-marked by
shrapnel and whose interiors are charred ruins. You come upon them
through the narrow stone streets. But visitors are returning to explore this
marvelous city on the Adriatic and to enjoy its festival offerings.
1997 has been described as the second summer of true normalcy
since the conclusion of the war. Thus, Dubrovnik resumed its summer
festival in its traditional central square, Gundulic Place, named after Ivan
Gundulic, Croatia's poet and playwright. The Dubrovnik Summer Festival
yet boasts two ceremonial openings, both perhaps for different reasons, but
characteristic of the city's spirit. The first, which takes place the evening
prior to the formal ceremonies, has been described by Slobodan Novak,
Croatian literary historian, as: "a cross between the theatre of the absurd,
vulgar urban humor, and carnival ... This event is the public dress rehearsal
for the formal opening ceremony and it usually turns into an improvised
collective popular show. The scenario is written on the spot and hugely
enjoyed by the crowd. It is ... a sign of rebellion, of free inspiration quite
different from the formal opening the next evening . . .. the rehearsal is
more like a popular carnival celebration mocking the elevated tone of the
ceremony, with much input from the gathered crowds."
1
The formal opening ceremony also casts its shadow over the theatre
to come. For this opening, while brief, evokes the appeal of political
patriotism and cultural identity. The opening musical selection, the Croatian
national anthem, gives way to political dignitaries, including the town
mayor, a leading member of the opposition to President Tjudman, so that
the festival can be declared open. After which follow historical personages
in period costume to praise Dubrovnik, from the Roman emperor
Constantine to George Bernard Shaw, who appears suddenly on a small
balcony overlooking the crowd to repeat his famous accolade: "If you are
searching for paradise on earth, come to Dubrovnik." Then the troupe of
actors arrives on a wooden cart pulled by minions, and the performers are
ceremoniously presented keys to the city. The troupe, actually part of the
Croatian National Theatre based in Zagreb, performs two brief scenes from
festival productions: Skup, the Miser, a famous Croatian Renaissance drama
by Marin Driic, and Le Malade imaginaire by Moliere.
All of this activity, including the TV spotlights and radio boom
mikes, is framed by the flickering of tall flambeaux down the Stradun, the
main avenue that cuts through old Dubrovnik from its western and eastern
gates now packed with onlookers.
The opening production, Skup, the Miser, with Marin Carie
directing the national theatre troupe, was given in a small outdoor square by
the famous steps to the seventeenth-century Jesuit church. During the act
break, director Carie added a traditional marriage ceremony with chorus and
dancers in full peasant costume behind the audience bleachers. While
Dubravka Vrgoc, drama critic to Vjesnik, Zagreb's leading daily, objected to
this intervention as extraneous to the script, it was for us a not unwelcome
curiosity.
Dubrovnik is a town which boasts per capita perhaps more cafes
than any other city in Europe or America. And in the tradition of the cafe,
after the performance the town council hosted the cast and audience to an
open air party at the base of the steps to the church. But whether you went
to the party or walked to a nearby cafe to enjoy the convivial street life, the
air of nightly fete was all-pervasive.
We were in Croatia because of an unusual set of circumstances. In
February 1997, in collaboration with Rorschach Theatre Company in New
York, we presented the American premiere of an avant-garde Croatian play,
King Gordogan, written by Radovan lvsic in 1942 during the dark days of
fascist and Stalinist terror. As a result of this success, the office of the
General Counsel of Croatia invited us to attend the Dubrovnik and Split
summer festivals in the hope that there could be a production of King
Gordogarim 1998-the first time an American company would return to the
49
national repertory an important Croatian play in English as adapted for the
New York stage.
The Dubrovnik Summer Festival continued with ten further
offerings: Hamlet, Croatian National Theatre, directed by Josko Juvancic;
Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris, Festival Dramatic Ensemble, also directed by
Juvancic; Moliere's Le Malade imagnaire, directed by Tomislav Radic; Mato
Vodopic's A Tale ofSade ]ele, directed by Ivica Kuncevic; the Brecht/Weill
The Moon of Alabama, lTD Theatre of Zagreb, directed by Peter Selem;
Teatro Settimo of Torino's Il Canto delle Citta, directed by Gabriele Vacis;
Marin Drzic's Uncle Maroje, Gavella Dramatic Theatre of Zagreb, directed
by Kresimir DolenCic; John Godber's Bouncers, Exit Theatre, Zagreb,
directed by Matko Raguz; an adaptation of R. D. Laing's Imago, directed by
Natasa Lusetic; and Luko Paljetak's The Last Flower of Summer, Marin Ddic
Theatre, directed by Ozren Prohic. Alongside these theatre works, the
festival also offered some thirty-five classical and contemporary musical
events, including a jazz festival, poetry readings, and exhibitions.
Croatian theatrical life is not limited to Dubrovnik, but continues
in Split, a larger coastal city some 150 miles north. The Split Summer
Festival began with an ornate production of Verdi's Aida, as directed by
Peter Selem, former associate to Georgio Strehler.
Split's opening ceremony was brief and formal, with several
political and intellectual figures speaking nervously on the Aida stage. One
speech in particular caused us to take note of what, at least from the outside,
seems both an unfortunately hostile reaction to the ready influence of
European and American cultures and a reactionary desire to "protect" an
assumed Croatian identity. That such thoughts were publicly voiced prior
to an Italian opera central to international repertory suggested an even
stranger ambivalence toward the issue of cultural identity.
After such prefatory comments to A ida, we were interested to note
Peter Selem's staging. By costuming the chorus in 1920s Hollywood versions
of Egyptian priests and concubines, including faux choreography and flat
vocalizations, the director gave an aura of pastiche. The final two acts did
offer some change in pace and poignancy, with touching solos and duets
toward the concluding scene where the lovers embrace in the falling shadows
of the tomb.
Most stunning here was the actual space for the production, a
square flanking Diocletian's fourth-century palace, which was in fact the
emperor's bedroom. Above the top columns of the still standing Roman
arcade a full moon rose, arcing slowly throughout the performance.
The Split Festival continued with a production of G.E. Lessing's
51
Moliere's Le Malade imagnaire, directed by Tornislav Radic.
Opening Ceremony, Dubrovnik Summer Festival
play of religious tolerance, Nathan the Wise, a choice with immediate
political resonances, directed by Georgi Paro, Intendant of the National
Theatre and professor of theatre arts at University of California, Santa
Barbara and San Diego. We were fortunate to attend the final dress rehearsal
set in the open-air garden of an exquisite Renaissance cloister. Although
Paro explained that he had made the Lessing work an annual Split event, this
was in fact only the third rehearsal for the entire troupe this summer. The
intensity of concentration and subtlety of their work were most impressive.
We ended our journey to Croatia on the island fortress city of
Hvar, which boasts a jewel-box seventeenth-century theatre, but whose
foundation stones reach back to the fourth or fifth century AD. The theatre
will soon begin to seek international funding for structural repairs, which
would enable its use both as a performance venue and as an institute for
dramatic studies. The theatre fills the second floor to a large building called
the "Arsenal," and whose purpose was to refit Venetian boats while lodging
sailors.
When on land, sailors require entertainment, and the theatre was
used initially for that purpose. In time, the citizens of Hvar petitioned for
use of the theatre. In 1676, the Hvar Municipality agreed to the financing,
and access was granted to all members of the community.
But let us return for a moment to G. B. Shaw's accolade given
during the opening ceremony to the Dubrovnik Festival. For it must not
only have been an appraisal of the beauty of the city and its seaside setting,
but a characteristically precise interpretation of the importance of theatre in
Croatian culture, an importance that we in the West sometimes search for
m vam.
NOTES
I. Slobodan P. Novak, "Dubrovnik Revised," Place and Destiny, fifty-ninth P.E.N. World
Congress, Dubrovnik, Croatia, Apri119-25, 1993. Published by the Bridge/Most and Croatian
P.E.N. Center, Zagreb, Croatia.
53
VARNA: FESTIVAL ON THE BLACK SEA
Glenn Loney
June opened in Bulgaria with the Fifth Annual Varna Summer
Theatre Festival. Its survival-despite the nation's dire economic
circumstances-is a welcome sign that Bulgarians, at both the national and
local levels, are determined to sustain their theatres.
For eleven days there were at least two productions on view each
evening, as well as ancillary activities. Not only was there a scholarly
conference on "Theatre as a Phenomenon in European History," but
there was also a "Critics' Seminar on Authentic Theatre." At the
moment-perhaps as a strenuous reaction to all the years of Soviet
domination and Socialist realism-some Bulgarian directors seem
absorbed in a frenzy of avant-garde Absurdist experimentation. But this
may well be a false impression, created by the selective programming at
the Varna Festival. Indeed, the Varna City Theatre had recently
performed Edward Albee's W1:1o 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Season-
programs in Sofia and other centers also suggested a balanced repertory of
classic and modern dramas.
Kamelia Nikolova, a leading drama critic, who also teaches at the
Institute of Art Criticism in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, was
chosen by her colleagues in the Bulgarian Theatre Association to monitor
the past season and nominate productions for the Varna Festival. A major
concern was to focus on the actor; and that the Festival did very well, for
I saw a number of engaging performers of widely varied talents.
In an interview published in the Festival Bulletin, Nikolova
explained her goals, "Primarily, my ambition was to represent the desire
for what I would call Authentic Theatre. I wanted to spot productions
which deftly use the contemporary language of drama. I am convinced
that the theatre is a place of communication. It is a language spoken by
two sides. If it is not constantly updated, theatre will not be a dialogue. If
someone is talking to the audience in Old Bulgarian, there will not be a
proper dialogue."
Despite my lack of any knowledge of Bulgarian, the festival
organizers thrust me-and some congenial colleagues from Romania,
Turkey, and the Netherlands- into the midst of the planned four-hour
seminar on "Authentic Theatre." Some of the Balkan critics had prepared
papers, which they proceeded to read. Invited to comment, I was
54
Gogol's The Coat, Presented by the Credo Theatre.
Varna Summer Theatre Festival
55
reluctant to tell our new Bulgarian friends that most of what I had been
seeing-both in Varna and Sofia-reminded me of the avant-garde
Absurdist experimentation I had experienced at Ellen Stewart's LaMaMa
E. T. C. in the 1960s and 1970s. Bulgarian Theatre is now having its own
long-delayed 1960s.
As far as "Authentic Theatre" in Bulgaria was concerned, I
suggested, it was right outside the windows of the elegant neo-baroque
Fellner and Helmer theatre-foyer in which we were reading our papers
and rehearsing our critical cliches. Animated Bulgarians, arguing and
joking in the public squares and side-streets of Varna, created a rich
Balkan theatre tapestry.
Selection of productions for the Festival was apparently not
easy. "The Best of a Very Trying Season" was the headline in the Festival
Bulletin, describing Nikolova's travails. She studied some fifty
productions-virtually the nation's entire season of stagings in all its
theatre-centers. "Thank God, I spotted eight plays in an authentic
contemporary language," she reported.
Both in Sofia and Varna, I was introduced to numbers of
charming, interesting actors and directors, none of whom was invited to
the Festival. So I must reserve judgment on the real nature and quality of
current theatre work in Bulgaria. Some were clearly bitter, even angry,
that their productions had not been chosen. I am certain I would have
been engaged, even delighted, with their work, had I been able to see it.
The Varna Festival, it must be noted, strives to be international.
It is not limited to Bulgaria, or even to the Balkans. Thus, as at the
Edinburgh Festival, though on a much smaller scale because of economic
privations, it enables Varna's citizens to see what the theatres in Bourgas,
Sofia, and other cities have been doing the past season. This past summer,
they could also see some small ensembles and one-person shows from
Britain, France, and the United States.
The Drama Theatre Ensemble of Bourgas offered a mildly post-
modern production of Eugene Ionesco's Absurdist Exit the King. The
titular character was played by Y osif Surchadjiev, who was fascinating to
watch on stage as he vainly tried to hold onto crown, throne, loves, and
life.
The one irritating shortcoming of the Ionesco staging was the
inadequate realization of what was-in its original conception-a striking
design idea. A stark black row of columns, in diminishing perspective
upstage, provided powerful framings, podiums, and platforms for the
King's addled courtiers.
Sofia' s Theatre of the Bulgarian Army invites both friends and
foes to laugh heartily. And foes and the uninitiated soon become friends
when its talented troupe offer its all-male version of a beloved modern
Bulgarian classic, Yordan Radichkov's Trying to Fly. But these actors are
not soldiers playing at theatre. They are trained professionals, fighting in
the Culture Wars. But how impressive that an army should prize culture
of any kind, especially theatre!
The players in Trying to Fly, both old and young, represented a
cross-section of Bulgarian village types. Even to a stranger in the Balkans,
both the characters and the actors seemed people you might want to
know. Dreams of flying, variously imagined, were made reality in a hot-
air balloon, which no one really knew how to control. Meanwhile,
personal and metaphoric national longings were made manifest in various
confrontations. This is a universal theme, after all, contrasting mundane,
even ridiculous, earthly concerns with imaginative, spiritual aspirations.
An intimidating Military Officer-representing tyrannical
authority in general, but also suggesting Nazi and Soviet actualities-was
ultimately unsuccessful at subjugating Bulgarian spirits. This popular
modern fable has been variously adapted for the stage by different native
ensembles. Bulgarian colleagues seemed surprised that it is not widely
known in the West, although as An Attempt at Flying, the play was
staged by M. Kisselov at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1981 after its
premiere at the National Theatre in Sofia.
The cleverly stylized set was, as with the Ionesco production, a
bit worn and ramshackled. The problem is not caused by excessive
touring, but by inadequate construction budgets and the heavy wear-and-
tear of playing daily repertory.
Theatre Shtrih performed Alice Point Love. When I opened the
handsome Festival Program, the three photos of the dance-mime work
immediately looked familiar. As well they might, for Glenn Loney was
boldly quoted, from the New York Theatre Wire, saying in part: "A
charming and non-aggressive performance . . . Born to tour ... Dance
and an exciting exercise in geometry put together."
I had seen this fascinating work months ago in New York at
LaMaMa. And I was right; it has been continually touring. As for its lack
of "aggression," the three lithe and beautiful young women who perform
Alice Point Love are involved in explorations of the possibilities of stretch-
fabric and lightweight rods, with much larger human and spiritual
57
58
Yordan Radichkov's Trying to Fly
Presented by Sophia's Theatre of the Bulgarian Army
Varna Summer Theatre Festival
Y ordan Radichkov' s Trying to Fly
Presented by Sophia's Theatre of the Bulgarian Army
Varna Swnmer Theatre Festival
e--
ll)
dimensions implied.
I also became involved in Stoyan Alexiev's monological
performance in quite a different way. He was recreating Tzvetan
Marangozov's The Mushroom, Or the Opposite of the Opposite, a manic
meditation-in fact, a prop-infested confessional-inspired by the actual
murder of the author Georgi Markov with an umbrella-weapon. Alexiev
performs it in two versions: French and Bulgarian. Desperate for an
afternoon nap-so long and far away from our spartan festival
accommodations-I had been given the key to a dressing-room. No
sooner did I stretch out on the spavined sofa than a presence entered:
"This is my dressing-room! I am an actor in this theatre!" I fled in
confusion. Two hours later, there he was on stage, staring at me in the
throes of his monologue. Part of his act is to pour festive champagne into
two flutes. When he lifted one and left the stage, I cringed, for I saw
where he was heading. But I gamely accepted the champagne-flute,
toasted him, and drank.
Theatre Sofia's Ivan Stanek presented a Don juan in Hell,
inspired by Bernard Shaw but based on other versions of the Don Juan
legend. Drawing on Moliere's very dark Don Juan comedy, as well as on
texts by Bataille and Baudelaire, Stanek's production consisted of sexual
fantasies mimed-with utter conviction and passion-by some very
beautiful young Bulgarian actresses. Several well dressed-even
young-couples got up in the middle of the performance and pushed their
way out of the orchestra, obviously shocked and outraged. Others shook
their heads in disbelief.
But director Stanek had, in fact, strongly directed his clearly
talented cast in a marvelous rusty-iron-walled scenic environment. When
doors slammed in Hell, you could certainly hear them clang! Visually,
Stanek's staging was of a professional quality that the other festival
productions could only approximate.
Vazkresia Viharova directed an Absurdist production of Peter
Turini's Alpine Lights. The leading actor was shown on film, bobbing
around nude in a cement-block cell. Later he sat in a neo-baroque stage-
box. The stage was dominated by the walls of just such a cement-block
cell as seen in the film.
There were a number of bizarre, sexually-suggestive experiments
with props and costumes, while the Parisian segment of Jim Jarmusch's
film about taxis and taxi-drivers was projected at center-stage.
The Serbian Dah Theatre presented The Legend A bout the End Of
Don Juan in Hell, directed by Ivan Stanek
Presented by Theatre Sofia, Varna Summer Theatre Festival
.......
-.)
the World. The three young Serbian women who perform The Legend are
both intelligent and charming offstage as well as compelling in
performance onstage as three wandering women who gather in the ruins
of a temple. It was not clear from the water dripping into pots from an
overhead canvas that this had ever been a place of worship, however, nor
that brewing Greek/Bulgarian/Turkish coffee over a camp-stove and
trying on costumes and pieces of jewelry were attempts to reclaim a
mythic, vanished past, the shards of many lost tribes and cultures.
Pouring ritual borders of sand on the floor-doth was interesting to
watch, as was the construction of a mythic city from small toy wooden
elements. The women's intermittent and fragmented dancing and singing
had real power.
The Ivan Vasov National Theatre of Sofia was represented by
Alexander Morfov's frantic version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I had
already seen it in the capital, in the ensemble's monumental playhouse, a
neo-baroque creation of the Viennese architects, Fellner and Helmer.
Thanks to designers Svetoslav Kokalov (settings) and Petya Stoykova
(masks and costumes), it was an impressive and relentlessly active
spectacle. The sets and trapezes moved as much as the performers, who
had special acrobatic and movement coaching.
Not only did I see The Tempest in an historic theatre in Sofia, but
I also was able to see Peter Brook's touring production of Samuel
Beckett's Happy Days in the Palace of Culture.
Although Bulgaria has given the world some opera greats-and
continues to do so-l was not able to see any productions at the Sofia
Opera House. Nor in Varna. I regard this as a loss.
What I did see there-for one night only-was the Credo Theatre
in its international sensation, Gogol's The Coat. I missed this last summer
on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it garnered raves. Its two very
talented creator/performers, Nina Dimitrova and Vassil Vassilev-Zuek,
have used Gogol's classic only as a point of departure in a puppet/mime
show unlike any other.
Wearing enormous mustachios, like a pair of mad Russians, they
are discovered on a small stage, apparently trapped inside a wooden cage
on rollers, which can become, with addition of some cloth-arms,
something like Gogol's overcoat. But, thanks to Velcro and various
cardboard panels, it can be a great many other things as well, as it is
turned inside out, divided, and up-ended. The arm-cloths can become
babies, tiny puppets-all manner of things.
Although much is mimed, there is also a constant flow of frantic
chirps and grunts. These baffled Russians look to each other for approval
and support. Some of the utterances are basic emotional sounds, but there
is also a text-subject to continual improvisation, of course. Witnessing
the show in their native Bulgarian, I surely missed some witty remarks,
which convulsed the audience around me. (They now perform it in eight
languages.) In person, they are even more delightful and imaginative than
in their stage personas. They are now at work on a highly unusual
treatment of Goethe's UrFaust.
63
SEAGULLS OVER NIAGARA
Laurence Senelick
The Seagull currently in performance at the Shaw Festival, Niagara-
on-the-Lake, Ontario, literally begins with a bang. Yakov the farmhand
steps on a loose board on Treplyov's platform stage; the board flies up, hits
him in the face and knocks him down. He goes through the rest of the play
with a bruised cheek. This is how director Neil Munro lets us know at once
that he intends to take the subtitle "A Comedy" as his guide.
Consequently, the first three acts are performed at a brisk clip, with
the briefest of pauses where these are indicated in the script and a large
number of sight gags. The symbolist play-within-a-play is a Noises-Off-like
disaster long before Arkadina makes her slighting remarks: the huge scene-
curtain won't go up properly, sound effects come in at the wrong times, the
sulphur fumes get entirely out of control, and the Devil's red lights are
ridden in on a bicycle. One of Munro's directorial tics is to hide characters
behind scenery, forcing them to communicate at a disadvantage. In t he first
act, characters frequently get entangled in the platform's impedimenta and
the shrubbery (cut-out wing-and-border bushes consonant with Treplyov's
"First wing, second wing and then empty space"). The bare stage of Act
Three is littered with mountainous mounds of luggage on trolleys, with
characters moving in and out of them as in a maze. To calm her hysterical
son mewling on the floor, behind the trunks, Arkadina Oedipally lies on
top of him, to the confusion of Yakov who enters and immediately exits
again. She uses the same approach with Trigorin, pressing him against the
floor-boards until he consents to stay with her.
Such explicitness is not extended to the seagull itself. Although the
Moscow Art Theatre emblem is emblazoned upstage before the play begins,
Treplyov carries the dead bird in a gamebag from which it is never removed;
and in the last act, its stuffed effigy is supposedly in a box which Shamraev
never opens.
Rarely, however, do any of these innovations work against
Chekhov's intentions. Never have I heard an audience laugh so
uproariously at Sarin's (Michael Ball) sentences trailing off into nothingness
or at Trigorin's wishy-washiness. Although there is a certain lack of texture
and detail that results from the energetic and quickly paced action, it is
compensated by a freshness of insight. This is midsummer madness
envisaged not by Ingmar Bergman, but by Woody Allen (before he decided
to be Ingmar Bergman).
There seems to be an economic imperative behind the directorial
decision to go for laughs. Despite its mandate to produce masterpieces of
drama written in Shaw's lifetime, the Festival in its thirty-five year history
has never before produced Chekhov. In part, this was because it chose not
to poach on the territory of its rival the Stratford Shakespeare Festival; but
apparently Stratford has now renounced Chekhov, leaving him fair game for
the Shavians. A major constraint, however, was the box-office; even with
a production geared to amuse, The Seagull lags behind the other Festival
Theatre productions this year in ticket sales. The cliches about Chekhov
prevail. At my hotel I heard a hostess respond to someone who asked
whether The Seagull was worth seeing, "Well, it's Russian-lots of
philosophy-morbid." Since Chekhov always uses the word "philosophy"
pejoratively and since his interest in morbid states is that of a physician, not
a wallower, such remarks constitute defamation of character. But it is not
surprising. A month earlier, in a London audience, I had heard a man from
the Midlands rail, "Don't talk to me about O'Neill! He's a modern-day
Chekhov, all misery and agony."
Moreover, Canada's Chekhovian tradition is not of long standing.
In the United States and Great Britain, by the 1920s and 30s, shrewd
directors such as Jed Harris and Theodore Komisarjevsky had known how
to attract audiences by titivating Chekhov with stars, cutting and rewriting
the plays to the taste of the time, and laying on an atmosphere of glamour
and romance. Canada never saw a Seagull until 1948, and then with a
student cast. Currently, Montreal, with its more sophisticated theatre scene,
accepts Chekhov as a classic open to deconstruction and reinterpretation
along the latest experimental lines; but in English-speaking Canada he
remains obscured by the old libels of boredom and incomprehensibility.
The cast has entered into the director's concept with gusto and, for
the most part, seems eager to avoid traps of sentimentality and emotional
scab-picking. There is an All About Eve quality to the Nina of Jan
Alexandra Smith; from the very start she is dismissive of Treplyov and tags
after Arkadina monitoring the older actress's every gesture. Fiona Reid's
Arkadina is no grande dame, but a selfish, inwardly panicked professional,
who calculates each of her moves in real life as she would on stage; she
knows when she is being unfair but cannot overcome her own fears to avoid
it. Hints of Woody Allen crop up again in the bespectacled, balding,
diffident Trigorin of Jim Mezon, a man bemused by his mediocrity and
amused by his celebrity. Ben Carlson plays Treplyov as a tousle-headed boy
whose tantrums are the crying fits of a spoiled brat; no one but Masha
would take him for a genius. Unfortunately, in the Shaw repertory Carlson
65
also plays Frank in Mrs Warren's Profession, another coltish young man
rejected by the woman he loves; he doesn't manage to distinguish the two
characters sharply enough.
The other actors are adequate but do not provide the fresh takes on
their characters that the leading quartet does. There isn't enough comedy
in the interchanges between Dorn and Polina, because Robert Benson is too
earnest, missing the Doctor's flippant egoism, while Sharry Flett is too
prone to tears. Norman Browning, who plays the crude Sir George in Mrs
Warren, makes his Shamraev deliberately brutal; this creates a disharmony
in the tone, since the farm manager's cruelty comes from obtuseness, not
sadism. And the Medvedenko and Masha of Simon Bradbury and Corrine
Koslo closely resemble standard renditions of those parts.
The vitiation that comes from mixing exciting new interpretations
with conventional characterization is repeated in the pattern of the
production as a whole. Avoiding laughs entirely, Act Four is performed as
the very morass of misery that the tired businessman complains of in
Chekhov. Contained in a shallow set, with none of the earlier
concealments, it is played straight for optimum unhappiness. Instead of
casting a jaundiced eye on the characters belly-aching, as he had done earlier,
the director suddenly decides to take it at face value. The interview between
Nina and Treplyov seems perfunctory: he even fails to register a shock of
recognition when for the first time she says she once loved him. The only
invention here is to have Treplyov ball up the pages of his manuscript and
strew them about the floor rather than burning them. Unfortunately, this
evidence of his state of mind presages his suicide to the others.
The main stumbling-block to taking The Seagull for the comedy
Chekhov intended is Treplyov's shooting himself at the end. When he first
read the play to the actress Lydia Yavorskaya (one of the models for
Arkadina), she protested "You can't have a man shoot himself without
making a speech first." Non-professionals simply find the ending too
"tragic." Chekhov himself regarded suicide as a cowardly and wasteful act;
his point is that it is simply another in the series of incidents that comprise
life. He wanted the curtain to be halfway down and the lotto players
engaged in their game when Dorn reveals the shooting to T rigor in, to
suggest that this death is no different from such passatempi. Forecasting
Beckett, Chekhov equates self-destruction and board games as equally trivial
pursuits.
Unfortunately, the Shaw Festival production makes the mistake of
turning the suicide into a climax. The paper on the floor has already alerted
some of the more sensitive characters that something is wrong. Treplyov
is playing the piano offstage, when a muffled sound is heard. Suddenly all
the players at the table freeze while the Doctor goes out to see what has
happened. With the game suspended, the freeze is held for a very long pause
(not unlike the famous pause a young Peter Brook put in his Love's Labors
Lost after the announcement of the death of the King of France), and when
Dorn at some remove informs Trigorin of what has transpired, certain
actors make it clear that their characters have overheard the intimation of
mortality. It is hard to determine whether this gloomy Act Four represents
a failure of will or imagination on the director's part, or a conscious choice
to revert to the bromidic Chekhov.
Finally, the old Slavicist's complaint is pertinent here: almost every
patronymic and place name goes mispronounced. This is all the more
lamentable, since David French's excellent translation proves that one can
be closely faithful to Chekhov and still allow the play to speak eloquently
to a contemporary audience, without the need to Mametize, Van Itallicize
or Neil Simonize it.
67
FROM CRAIOVA TO LINCOLN CENTER:
SIL VIU PURCARETE'S LES DANAiDES AND CONTEMPORARY
ROMANIAN THEATRE
Eric Pourchot
Romania has produced extraordinary directors and playwrights
over the years. Many are known only within their country, but others,
often fleeing political constraints, have made international reputations.
Tristan Tzara found Paris more amenable for his Dada creations; Eugene
Ionesco left Romania as the Fascist regime gained power before World War
Two; Liviu Ciulei and Andrei e r b n are acclaimed internationally for their
projects. Other directors, such as David Esrig and Lucian Pintilie, were
forced to leave Romania for overstepping the boundaries of acceptable
political art in the 1970s. Since 1989, a new wave of Romanian directors has
become visible internationally. Through international tours and exchanges,
these directors have been able to employ the larger financial resources, media
attention, and flexible production structures not available in the state-
supported repertory theatre system in Romania. The most recent export to
arrive in the United States was Silviu Purcarete's huge spectacle, Les
Danaides, originally created in the fall of 1995 at the National Theatre of
Craiova and co-produced by the Holland Festival, La Grande Halle de Ia
Villette, Festival d' Avignon, and Wiener Festwochen. The play was revived
for tour to Germany and to Lincoln Center, where it was performed on a
specially-built stage in Damrosch Park.
As the political situation in Romania and most of Eastern Europe
has become more democratic and such exchanges increase, audience
expectations have also changed. In a 1995 interview in Bucharest, Silviu
Purcarete described this shift: "We're no longer seen as exotic apes who can
speak, but we're judged according to the general [artistic] criteria. Thank
God for this: I was very annoyed with the excess of superficial politicizing."
1
Nevertheless, it is still tempting to read theatrical works from Eastern
Europe in primarily political terms. Purcarete's Les Danaides is no
exception. The director himself calls attention to the parallels of exile,
national identity, and international assistance between the ancient Greek
world and Europe today. In a New York Times article, Purcarete stated that
"I was stunned by the political and social topicality of the play. Borders
opening and at the same time closing, nations in conflict, the myth of the
origin of Europe. The play had all the elements you could find in a daily
newspaper."
2
68
Silviu Purdirete, director of Les Danaides
69
The production goes far beyond the elements of a daily newspaper.
It has many qualities of a Sunday edition: colorful, diverse, surprising,
greatly entertaining, but overwhelming in scope and strangely unmoving.
Les Danaides is a new play, despite its ancient Greek roots. The
opening scene would make a diabolical final exam for a Dramatic Theory
class: the Greek Gods quote from various theorists from Aristotle to
Diderot to discuss tragedy, the value of pity and terror, and the purpose of
watching human suffering. The primary text of the play, in French,
combines Aeschylus's The Suppliants with fragments from the other plays
in the trilogy and satyr play, as well as lines drawn from other plays by
Aeschylus, to tell the entire story of the fifty sisters who fled from a forced
marriage with their fifty cousins. Purciirete edits tightly so that the two-
hour production moves quickly, without an intermission needed or wanted.
The tale is told with extravagant use of low-tech theatricality. The
cast of 107 actors use props, costumes, cloth, fire, water, movement, and
voice to create wonderful imagery. The fifty suitcases carried by the
daughters of Danaos are especially effective. They become tombstones,
temples, beds, city walls, and dominoes. The deep stage is also used to create
images of movement and changes in scale with large screens of cloth. Even
the theatrical cliche of undulating a large cloth to produce an image of water
is given new life by the sheer scale: fifty people can generate an entire ocean.
The images are generally so precise, so clear, and so stimulating that the few
moments which are less flawless, such as a battle scene using Chinese
ribbons, are jarring in contrast.
Also of note is the precision and clarity of the choral work. Each
syllable of the French text is distinct and intelligible-not an easy feat when
fifty actors try to speak in unison on an outdoor stage. Surprisingly, many
of the chorus members are not actors by profession or training. The cast
was drawn primarily from college students in other fields. The seven actors
portraying the Gods, Danaos, Io, and Pelasgos were also extremely effective
and include major figures in Romanian theatre along with French actor Jean-
Jacques Dulon who replaced Radu Beligan, a premiere actor and artistic
director, for the current tour.
Despite the visual clarity of the production, some aspects of the
story line become unclear in the second part of the performance. Some
events that are described in the program synopsis are not supported by the
text (translated into English in supertitles) or adequately elucidated by the
production. The identity of the gods, a dream sequence, and the
punishment of the Dana1ds were only intelligible by referring to the
70
71
program. The director also did little to prepare us for the jarring change of
tone of the satyr play, although perhaps one should not expect a modern
audience to readily accept the abrupt mix of genres that was taken for
granted by the ancient Greeks.
There are also deliberate miscues that do not necessarily confuse the
action but rather broaden the questions about what we see. Danaos, the
father, played by actress Coca Bloos, emerges from a suitcase. He is bald,
bearded, and shirtless. No reference is made to his feminine breasts, but the
androgyny of the character is always before us. He is mother and father to
his fifty daughters. By contrast, all of the Egyptians have shaved heads,
except one with a shoulder-length topknot. Despite the expectation that
this character has been differentiated from the other fifty Egyptians for a
purpose, he dies with his brothers without distinguishing himself in any way
except by his hairstyle. Two of the Gods double as other characters:
Artemis becomes Io, and Apollo steps in as Pelasgos, the King of Argos who
shelters the Dana'ids. Upon the death of Pelasgos, the other gods welcome
Apollo back to the realm of Olympus. Why these particular combinations
are made is not obvious, but the double casting reinforces the arbitrary and
cynical attitude displayed by the gods toward the mortals in the story.
There is also the temptation to equate the gods with the powers of Europe,
watching the bloody events in the Balkans with cynical detachment, if one
wishes to find a simple political equation for the play.
Given the extremes of passion that we witness, there is an odd lack
of emotional connection with the events on stage. We watch, we are thrilled
by the sounds and pictures, but leave with little empathy for the strange
events that have taken place. Purciirete makes little attempt to humanize the
action and chooses not to highlight the love element which keeps
Hypermnestra from killing her husband as her sisters do. Indeed, Lynkeus,
her husband, is not distinguished from any of the other Egyptians.
Considering that the outcome of their union founds the Greek nation and,
thus, Europe, one would expect more emphasis on the roots of this
fortuitous survival from slaughter. In this environment, even the presence
of a beautiful nude woman on stage remains an image rather than a
corporeal presence. Despite the absence of empathy, which could truly
transport us, Purciirete has created a remarkable piece of theatre which will,
one hopes, open doors for further projects by Romanian artists in the
future.
The symposium on July 12 organized by Lincoln Center to
accompany the production featured Neil Wallace, the executive producer of
the tour, Daniel Gerould of City University of New York Graduate Center,
Martha Coigney of USITI, and the director. Gerould identified five traits
seen in Eastern European theatre at its best: 1) the use of image and
metaphor to create a poetic theatre, 2) reliance on handcrafted resources
rather than high-tech effects, 3) concern with the processes of history, a
trans-personal view of the community evolving through time, 4) a search for
roots and origins, for the underlying essences rather than surfaces, and 5) a
rich repertory in which the classics-foreign and domestic-play a major
role. All of these elements can certainly be detected in Les DanaUles.
Martha Coigney spoke of her first visit to Romania in 1969 and subsequent
exchanges, noting that Romanians show "an extraordinary talent for
theatre" and "a ferocious energy for creation." Neil Wallace provided some
background on the production. 800 actors auditioned for the 107 stage
roles. Following the premiere in Craiova in December of 1995, the
production toured Romania, then was taken to Amsterdam, Rome, Paris,
Avignon, Glasgow, and Dublin. After a short break in the fall of 1996, the
show was revived for the German and U.S. productions.
One of the strengths of Romanian directors is their training:
directors have a four to five year course of studies at the Academy of
Theatre and Film (A TF) and then often find themselves in state-supported
repertory companies which allow for large casts and long rehearsal periods
conducive to experimentation. Purciirete graduated from A TF during one
of the most repressive periods in Romanian theatre. The late 1960s and
early 1970s saw a liberalization of the repertory and more ties to the West.
As Purciirete said in the symposium offered before the July 12 performance,
this period was short-lived, and "the fist that eventually fell was even
stronger." Several of his professors at ATF left the country or were placed
in mental hospitals during the 1970s. Although the intellectuals were
silenced, the theatre remained immensely popular, according to Purdirete.
Through the use of metaphors and "tricks to say what you didn't dare say,"
audiences "went to theatre like to church" and the theatre provided "the
illusion of a place where truth can be said." Still, Purciirete describes his
twelve years as Director of Teatrul Mic in Bucharest as a painfully
frustrating experience: "Every morning I was going to rehearsals with my
head bowed. I was going to do my job.''
3
An example of how Romanian theatre functioned during the
e a u ~ e s c u era can be seen in Purciirete's production of Dumitru Radu
Popescu's Piticul din griidina de vara (The Dwarf in a Summer Garden).
Popescu's play appeared shortly after a blistering attack on playwrights and
producers by the Central Committee of the communist party in 1971. In
response to the call for works with communist heroes, the play depicts a
73
communist woman tortured by fascist police. Revived in 1989 at the
National Theatre of Craiova by Purdirete, it was called "a moving poem
dedicated to the communist fight for the country's liberation" by Romania's
leading theatre In the actual production, however, references to
communism were toned down, and audiences apparently saw it as a
metaphor for the actions of the communist regime. "The type of the
character, of the communist woman, was perfectly valid for the anti-
communist martyrs as well. This is how the play was understood by
everybody working on it. The audience didn't cry over the sad destiny of
the communist woman from 45 years ago, but perceived a very actual
situation, a very present one," said Purdirete.
5
Nevertheless, the origin of
the text stirred a great deal of controversy after the overthrow of
in December, 1989 and Purdirete found himself having to defend his choice
of play.
Such controversies may account in part for Purdirete's penchant for
staging international classics. Despite successful productions of plays by Ion
Luca Caragiale, Marin Sorescu, and D.R. Popescu in the past, Purdirete has
apparently not staged a Romanian script since 1989. Nor is he alone in this
choice. Several Romanian critics, literary managers, and playwrights whom
I interviewed in November of 1996 complained that the repertory is now
controlled by the tastes of directors who preferred classic plays which could
more easily be toured abroad. They referred to this condition as the
"tyranny of the director." In Bucharest, this certainly seems to be the case.
At the National, Bulandra, and Nottara theatres, Romanian works account
for only 10-20% of the active repertory, and are often adaptations from non-
dramatic sources. Other theatres in Bucharest, such as Mic, Comedy, and
Odeon, have demonstrated even less interest in native works. Many
provincial companies, however, have retained an emphasis on Romanian
plays and their active repertories may consist of 20 to 30% Romanian works.
Considering the fact that plays from 1945-1989 are often considered
"suspect" by the public, and that works from before that time have generally
not been staged or published unless passing political tests, the shift to foreign
plays is not so surprising.
Purdirete acknowledges that there has been a shift away from the
production of Romanian plays. At the Lincoln Center symposium, he
called the situation "almost a scandal" which amounted to "a divorce
between people of the stage and playwrights." However, when I asked if
there were Romanian authors he would be interested in introducing to the
world, given adequate funding, he responded with a blunt "no." He
conceded that his lack of interest could result from not reading enough
scripts, but indicated that many of his colleagues were similarly disinclined
to produce Romanian works.
The concerns over the production of Romanian plays do not, of
course, detract from the excellence of this vibrant theatrical staging. The
play was very well received in Romania: in a survey of 15 drama critics
from Bucharest by Teatrul Azi, eight proposed Les Danaides as the best
production of the season. Tellingly, in the same survey, six critics left the
category of best production of a contemporary Romanian play blank.
6
Clearly, there is a vacuum of domestic plays in the current repertory. One
can only hope that a director of Purdirete's stature will be available when
new plays of merit are worthy of production. In the meantime we can also
look forward to more international productions arising from Purcarete's
new position as artistic director of the Theatre de !'Union in Limoges,
France.
NOTES
1. Silviu Purcarete, "Interview with Silviu Purcarete," interview by Marian Popescu,
anonymous translation, Semnal T eatral no. 1 (1995): 82.
2. Quoted in Alan Riding, "In an Ancient Mirror, an Image of Europe Rising," The New York
Times, 6 July 1997, H6.
3. Purcarete, 86.
4. Ion review of Piticul din Griidina de varii, by D.R. Popescu, as performed by
Teatrul National, Craiova, Teatrul no. 8 (1989}: 42. My translation.
5. Purcarete, 84.
6. "Cel mai bun ... Cea mai buna," Teatru/Azi, no. 2 (1996): 32-33.
75
REBUILDING THE RUINS: INTERCULTURAL THEATRE
ALLIANCES BETWEEN THE U.S. AND EASTERN-CENTRAL
EUROPE
Telory Williamson
In late June the Trust for Mutual Understanding sponsored a week-
long discussion among artists from Eastern-Central Europe and the United
States (the first in a projected series of intercultural theatre meetings) at
Double Edge Theatre's newly developed Center for Living Culture in
Ashfield, Massachusetts. The Center, which consists of a renovated barn
and its surrounding fields, was offered by Double Edge as a space for
"collaboration in a quiet and protected environment [with] no observers and
no expectations."
1
The participants from Eastern Europe included the Polish
director Wlodzimierz Staniewski (founder of the center of Theatre Practices
Gardzienice), the Romanian Liana Ceterchi, the Hungarian director Katalin
Laban (co-founder of the Budapest R.S. 9 Theatre), and Uzbekistan director
Mark Weil. The Americans taking part in the conference-affectionately
termed "the usual suspects," -were those theatre supporters, funders, and
artistic representatives who invest on a variety of levels in the future of
U.S./Eastern-Central European artistic collaboration. Featured speakers
were: Stacy Klein, Artistic Director of Double Edge, Ellen Kaplan of Smith
College, Michael Griggs, Artistic Director of Portland's International
Performance Festival, and Philip Arnoult, conference facilitator and
instructor at the University of Tennessee and Towson State University in
Baltimore. In my position as "usual suspect," I left the weekend's
conversations with more questions than answers, a tribute to the breadth
and complexity of the conference's mission.
The main purpose of this conference was to discuss collaborative
projects between Eastern and Western artists since the 1989 dismantling of
the Soviet bloc. The conference's strength, as well as its "safety," relied on
pre-existing collaborative connections between the attending artists. These
connections focused on Double Edge Theatre's combined interest in the
Jewish Diaspora movement and the folk performance traditions of Eastern-
Central Europe.
Stacy Klein has been greatly influenced by Staniewski with whom
she has worked as an actress as well as by Tadeusz Kantor and Eugenio
Barba. Klein's personal pedagogy is based on Kantor' s search for an
"autonomous theatre. "
2
Staniewski explained that in his work with
Gardzienice, his aim has been to create a ritualistic bond between performers
and spectators through a carnivalesque theatrical mode labeled "ethno-
oratorio" where most text is sung and accompanied by gestures, acrobatics,
and dancing, similar in form but not style to China's Peking Opera.
3
Staniewski believes firmly in Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of carnival as the
great social equalizer: "Carnival brings together, unifies, weds, and
combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with
the insignificant, the wise with the stupid."
4
Although Gardzienice and
Double Edge draw upon Grotowski's poor theatre and paratheatrical
experiments, both groups are adamant about establishing their own modes
of work independent from Grotowski's influence.
5
Staniewski referred to himself as a theatre anarchist, claiming that
anarchy is reflected in his work on a very structural level. In leading
theatrical ensemble work, he wishes to gather people together as a way of
solving communal problems. His projects involve both a literal and
metaphorical "rebuilding of a ruin." He is in search of people who are
willing to spend weeks rebuilding a new theatre structure from the ruins of
the old while at the same time rebuilding the physical and social structures
within a community. For him, the literal and the metaphorical senses of
rebuilding are closely connected. He cited Double Edge's commitment to
extend this reconstructive work into Romanian and Polish villages as a
prime example of community rebuilding.
Conference participants distinguished clearly between the terms
"multicultural" and "intercultural." Martha Coigney, director of New
Y ark's International Theatre Institute, cut to the root of the problem in her
declaration that "multiculturalism is the biggest buzzword for disguising the
lack of real cultural exchange." Others raised questions about the search for
self in foreign cultures as a need to see something "other" that resonates with
a deep sense of familiarity. Michael Griggs admitted that in his own efforts
to nurture intercultural collaboration, both sets of collaborators had to wade
through their own misconceptions of the "other" in this process of cultural
exchange. Stacy Klein called for a transformation of audience members in
intercultural collaborative performance rather than a full understanding.
The prereqms1te for such an audience transformation is a
reconceptualization of identity on the part of performers that allows
cultural borders to be more fluid. The crucial question for groups such as
Double Edge Theatre is how to encounter the "other" while respecting
difference.
77
'-1
00
"'
....
<:!
;:;
"'
i

'<
..g

::!

::!

<
?-
_!:::i
z
?
...,
Bonnie Cordon in Keter: the Crowning Song, conceived
and directed by Stacy Klein, presented at the Double Edge Theatre
In the company's performance of Keter: the Crowning Song, a work
representative of their intercultural exchange with performers and
community members from the Ukraine, the actors adopted Staniewski's
model of ethno-oratory, singing, dancing, miming, and transforming props
in a minimalist set. Keter is part three of a trilogy ten years in the making
about Eastern European and Sephardic Jews which uses the Jewish culture
of the Diaspora in relation to surrounding societies as a metaphor for
universal questions of faith, of cultural dialogue, and of human
responsibility."
6
Double Edge's purpose in making this trilogy has been to
present a juxtaposition of the realities of cultural isolation and extinction
with the possibilities of cultural preservation and mutuality. "
7
Merging the legends of King Arthur, Hamlet, and the spiritual
quest of Rabbi Nachman, Keter drew heavily on elements of mysticism; lit
primarily by candles and torches, the transformation of Double Edge's
newly-renovated barn was complete. Freshly-sanded wood floors became
desert sand dunes, folk songs sung in Hebrew, Ukranian, and Ladino (the
language of Spanish Medieval Jewry) positioned onlookers as witnesses to
an ancient cult ritual. Spectators left the performance reverent and subdued.
It was not until the following morning's discussion of the
performance that I began to realize what had so profoundly disturbed me
about two short segments of the piece in which an actor spoke an English
text from the Song of Solomon. These brief moments of English recitation
in the midst of Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Ladino lyricism stuck out in a
strident juxtaposition which appeared wholly unintended. When
questioned about the use of English, director Stacy Klein explained that she
allowed her actors to sing in foreign languages, but demanded that they
speak only in their native tongues. This mandate, for Israeli actor and
rehearsal instructor Nachum Cohen, presented fewer problems. For the
American actor who spoke neither Hebrew nor Ukrainian, it was more
difficult. It was in these brief moments of English declamation that I was
made painfully aware of what it means to be othered" within an exoticized
foreign context. Double Edge had constructed a foreign other''
performance space for themselves which could not support their brief
moments of reversion back to "self."
In our conference discussion of the performance, the company
explained how it was that in their work with Ukrainian communities they
stumbled upon a cultural link that they had not anticipated. As a company
interested in Jewish identity, Double Edge entered the Ukraine with a
79
Nachum Cohen in Keter: the Crowning Song, conceived and directed by Stacy
Klein
80
knowledge of Hebrew prayers and songs which had become an integral part
of their work. They performed a Hebrew prayer song for Ukrainian
communities which the Ukrainians identified as a shepherd's song with the
same score but a completely different set of Ukrainian lyrics. Each new
village the company encountered on their tour taught them a slightly
different version of this song, which they then used in composite form for
Keter. The song became a sort of "performative passport" which allowed for
a musical dialogue between cultures.
It is clear that the nature of Double Edge's work, both in content
and form, placed them in an ideal position for productive intercultural
exchange with the Ukraine. The question of how well other American
companies without such personal and artistic connections might fare in
attempting the same exchange is worth considering. Double Edge was
obviously presented by conference organizers as an example of successful
intercultural collaboration, discounting concerns about cultural
appropriation and the complexities of Jewish identity in Eastern-Central
Europe which never made it to the discussion table. Undoubtedly, the
benefit received by Ukrainian artists from Double Edge's workshops and
reconstructive physical labor was of great importance.
The most valuable lesson to be learned by American collaborators
in the U.S./Eastern-Central European exchange is the power of ensemble
work. As a country which teaches students to be primarily competitive
fame-seekers, the U.S. has done little to encourage the more community-
oriented approach to theatre practiced by artists like Wlodzimierz
Staniewski. Group work has difficulty thriving in an American tradition of
rugged individualism, yet it is what the theatre training in this country needs
most. As Ellen Kaplan suggested during this final weekend of the
conference, why not teach students to view theatre beyond schooling as a
web of networked connections rather than a funnel for weeding out non-
stars. Why not develop, in Staniewski's words, "an ensemble culture for the
theatre based on a group problem-solving process." In this fashion we might
begin to think globally, respect differences, and act in local ensemble work
which strives for communitarian theatre within free market cultures.
81
82
Slavic and East Europe<:n Performance Vol. 17, No.3
NOTES
1. This information was pan of a grant proposal made to the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
2. Kathleen M. Cioffi, Alternative Theatre in Poland, The Netherlands: Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1996, p.44.
3. Ibid, p. 212.
4. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1984, p.l23.
5. Stacy Klein said in very clear terms that Grotowski was not her mentor. For more
information on Staniewski' s relation to Grotowski's work, see Halina Filipowicz's anicle,
"Expedition into Culture: The Gardzienice (Poland)" in The Drama Review, Volume 27, No.
1, Spring 1983.
6. Quoted from an informational conference brochure.
7. Ibid.
83
CONTRIBUTORS
ALLAN GRAUBARD is a poet and playwright. His adaptation of
Radovan Ivsic's King Gordogan, published by Croatian PEN Center, Zagreb,
is available through SEEP. In spring 1998, he will premiere his own play The
One in the Other at Synchronicity Space Theatre in New York.
ROGER HILLMAN is Senior Lecturer in the Department of European
Languages at the Australian National University, Canberra, convening the
Film Studies Program as well as teaching courses in German literature and
civilization. Recent publications include co-editing Fields of Vision: Essays in
Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography (University of California
Press, 1995).
ALLEN J. KUHARSKI is Resident Director in the Theatre Studies
Program at Swarthmore College. He also works as Performance Review
Editor for Theatre Journal and as Associate Editor for Periphery: Journal of
Polish Affairs. He is preparing a book on Polish playwright Witold
Gombrowicz.
STUART LIEBMAN is a professor and coordinator of the Film Studies
Program at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He
has recently edited a special issue of The Persistence of Vision devoted to Jean
Renoir.
GLENN LONEY is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College and the
CUNY Graduate Center. His forthcoming book, edited with Richard
Helfer, follows Peter Brook from the outset of his work in Paris. His forty
years of photographs at home and abroad are now represented by the
Everett Collection. He continues to record Architecture, Art Design, and
Lifestyles under the NYC-registered title of INFOTOGRAPHY.
CAROLINE McGEE is a New York actress and director. Currently, she
is assistant professor of Theatre Arts at Catholic University, Washington
DC. This spring, she will appear in the premiere of Allan Graubard's The
One in the Other at Synchronicity Space Theatre.
ERIC POURCHOT is a Site Director at Walter Reed Hospital in
Washington D.C. He is completing his dissertation on contemporary
84 Sla1.1ic and East European Performance Vol. 17, No.3
Romanian theatre for the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the Graduate School
of the City University of New York.
LAURENCE SENELICK is Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at
Tufts University and Honorary Curator of Russian Drama and Theatre at
the Harvard Theatre Collection. His many books include Anton Chekhov
(Macmillan Modern Dramatists) and the recently published The Chekhov
Theatre. He spoke on "The Lakeshore of Bohemia: Artists in The Seagull"
at the Shaw Festival this summer.
TELORY WILLIAMSON is a Ph.D. candidate in Drama at Stanford
University. She has an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York
University's Tisch School of the Arts and a B.A. in English from
Swarthmore College. Her most recent publications include theatre reviews
for Theatre Journal.
The Last Stop
Courtesy of Wanda Jakubowska
The Last Stop
Courtesy of Wanda Jakubowska
Operetta
Stefan Okolowicz
Operetta
Stefan Okolowicz
Operetta
Stefan Okolowicz
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia
Matthias Horn
Attorney Kraykowski's Dancer
Stefan Okolowicz
85
Attorney Kraykowski's Dancer
Stefan Okolowicz
Skup, 7he Miser
Ana Opalic
Le Malade imaginaire
Ana Opalic
The Coat
Courtsey of Glenn Loney
Trying to Fly
Nadezhda Chipeva
Trying to Fly
Elena Nankova
Don Juan in Hell
Courtesy of Glenn Loney
Silviu Purciirete
Sean Hudson
Les Danaides
Sean Hudson
Keter: the Crowning Song
Fanny Elouz
Fanny Elouz
Fanny Elouz
PUBLICATIONS
The following is a list of publications available through the Center for
Advanced Study in Theatre Arts (CAST A}:
Soviet Plays in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Alma H. Law and C. Peter Goslett. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Polish Plays in Translation. An annotated bibliography. Compiled and
edited by Daniel C. Gerould, Boleslaw Toborski, Michal Kobialka,
and Steven Hart. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign).
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters. Introduction and Catalog by Daniel C.
Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign}.
Polish and Soviet Theatre Posters Volume Two. Introduction and Catalog
by Daniel C. Gerould and Alma H. Law. $5.00 ($6.00 foreign}.
Eastern European Drama and The American Stage. A symposium with
Janusz Glowacki, Vasily Aksyonov, and moderated by Daniel C.
Gerould (April 30, 1984}. $3.00 ($4.00 foreign}.
These publications can be ordered by sending a U.S. dollar check or money
order payable to:
CASTA-THEATRE PROGRAM
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER
33 WEST 42nd STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10036
87
Now in its 15th year, this journal, edited by Daniel Gerould,
hrings readers lively, authoritative accounts of drama, theatre, and
I'ilm in Russia and Eastern Europe. Includes features on important
new plays in performance, archival documents, innovative
productions, significant revivals, emerging artists, the latest in
I"ilm. Outstanding interviews and overviews. Published three
times per year - $1 () rer annum ($15.00 foreign).
Pll:asc send me the followinJ4
CASTA publication:
.\'la1i, and !:'usrcrn
/
1
/'lfuOJJWICC _ _ ta U 00 1-x:r yc:tr
!hm.:1r n; ___ ln) '\ i S DO
Tot:JI
Send order with check to:
CASTA. CUNY Graduate
13 Wc,l l 2nd Street
New Y<Hk. NY I 0036
"" 1'1 ; , 't P : ' I; I 'I' lo'; : I ' .. .-.... : -4
1" ,0 : ' , , ',.. f 1;1 " ' . ' ' ' ' U. ... , ...... I
An indispensable resource in keeping abreast of the latest theatre
developments in Western Europe. Issued three times a year- Spring,
Winter, and Fall -and edited by Marvin Carlson, each issue contains
a wealth of information about recent European festivals and
productions, including reviews, interviews, and reports. Winter
issues focus on the theatre in individual countries or on special
themes. News of forthcoming events: the latest in changes in artistic
directorships, new plays and playwrights, outstanding performances,
and directorial interpretations. - $15 per annum ($20.00 foreign).
,
Please send me the following CASTA publlcatl!1n:
I::urop<!an Sragi!S
_ @ Sl5.00 per year
(Foreign) _@ S20.00 per year
Total
Send order w lth encl05ed check to:
CASTA. CUNY Graduate Center
42nd Street
New York. NY 10036
The widely acclaimed journal devoted solely to drama and theatre
in the USA- past and present. Provocative, thoughtful articles by
the leading scholars of our time providing invaluable insight and
information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its
continuing contribution to world literature and the performing
arts. Edited by Vera Mowry Roberts and Jane. Bowers. Published
three times per year- $12 per annum ($18.00 foreign).
Please send me the following
CASTA publication:
Journal of American Drama
and Theatre _@ $12.00 per year
(Foreign)_@ $18.00
Total
Send order with enclosed check to:
CAST A, CUNY Graduate Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Ph.D. Program in Theatre
at the Graduate School and University Center
of the City University of New York
Offers graduate training in Theatre Studies
Certificate Program in Film Studies
Recent Seminars Include:
Contemporary Performance Theory and Technique
The Current New York Season Feminist Theory and Performance
Melodrama The History Play Dramaturgy Simulations
Film Aesthetics Romanticism Shakespeare's Comedies
Lesbian and Gay Theatre and Performance Classicism
Theatre History Dramatic Structure Theatre Criticism
American Film Comedy American Realism Belly Dancing
Kabuki Films and Theatre oflngmar Bergman
Native American Theatre Women and the Avant-Garde
Post-Coloniality and Performance
loterdisciplioary Options
with distinguished Graduate Center Faculty in other fields
and through a consortia! arrangement with
New York University and Columbia University
Affiliated with the Center for Advanced Study in the Theatre Arts (CASTA)
Journal of American Drama and Theatre
Slavic and East European Performance
Western European Stages
Theatre Faculty include:
Marvin Carlson, Jill Dolan, Daniel Gerould, Judith Milhous
Albert Bermel, Jane Bowers, Harry Carlson, Miriam D'Aponte,
Mira Feiner, Deborah Geis, Jonathan Kalb, Samuel Leiter, Benito Ortolani,
James Saslow, Pamela Sheingorn, Alisa Solomon, and Gloria Waldman
Film Faculty include:
Stuart Liebman, William Boddy, George Custen, Tony Pipolo,
Leonard Quart, Joyce Rheuban, Ella Shohat, and Elizabeth Weis
Ph.D. Program in Theatre
CUNY Graduate School and University Center
33 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
e-mail: www.gc.cuny.edu/ACADEMIC PROGRAMSIDISCIPLINES/theatre.htm

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