SEEP Vol.30 No.1 Winter 2010

volume 30, no.
l
Winter 2010
SEEP (ISS # 104 7 -0019) is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary
East European Drama and Theatre under the auspices of the Martin E.
Segal Theatre Center. The Institute is at The City University of New York
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. All
subscription requests and submissions should be addressed to Slavic and East
European Performance: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The City University of
New York Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309.
EDITOR
Daniel Gerould
MANAGING EDITOR
Christopher Silsby
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
Stefanie Jones Donatella Galella
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Tori Amoscato
ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin Wilson, Chair
Marvin Carlson Allen J. Kuharski Martha W Coigney Stuart Liebman
Leo Hecht Laurence Senelick Dash a Krijanskaia Anna Shulgat
SEEP has a liberal reprinting policy. Publications that desire to reproduce
materials that have appeared in SEEP may do so with the following provisions:
a.) permission to reprint the article must be requested from SEEP in writing
before the fact; b.) creclit 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 SEEP immecliately upon publication.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS
Daniel Gerould
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Frank Hentschker
DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATION
Jan Stenzel
Slavic and East European Performance is supported by a generous grant from the
Lucille Lortel Chair in Theatre of the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at The City
University of New York.
Copyright 2010. Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Editorial Policy
From the Editor
Events
Books Received
IN MEMORIAM
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"Vassily Pavlovich Aksyonov; 1932-2009"
Daniel Gerould
ARTICLES
"The Double Edge Theatre:
Eastern European Allegiances, Resonances, and Alliances"
Krystyna Lipiri.ska Ulakowicz
"Ivan Vyrypaev: A Cultural Cannibal"
Natalia Yakubova
"2009 Malta International Theatre Festival: Theatrical Spaces"
Howard Pflanzer
"Pltrywrights Before the FaiL
Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution,
Staged Readings and Symposium"
Beate Hein Bennett
REVIEWS
"Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Our Class:
Closer Even than Our Town"
Joshua Abrams and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
5
6
7
18
20
24
33
42
54
65
"Bruno Jasienski's Mannequins' Ball and Futurist Performance:
Wooden Legs Hit the Floor"
SaschaJust
"Zift, or the New Face of Bulgarian Cinema"
Vessela Warner
Contributors
75
82
92
EDITORIAL POLICY
Manuscripts in the following categories are solicited: articles of no
more than 2,500 words, performance and fllm reviews, and bibliographies.
Please bear in mind that all submissions must concern themselves with
contemporary materials on Slavic and East European theatre, drama, and film;
with new approaches to older materials in recendy published works; or with
new performances of older plays. In other words, we welcome submissions
reviewing innovative performances of Gogol, but we cannot use original
articles discussing Gogol as a playwright.
Although we welcome translations of articles and reviews from
foreign publications, we do require copyright release statements. We will also
gladly publish announcements of special events and anything else that may be
of interest to our discipline. All submissions are refereed.
All submissions must be typed double-spaced and carefully proofread.
The Chicago Manual o/ S!Jie should be followed. Transliterations should follow
the Library of Congress system. Articles should be submitted on computer
disk, as Word Documents for Windows, 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 Peiformance, c/ o Martin E.
Segal Theatre Center, The City University of New York Graduate Center, 365
5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309. Submissions will be evaluated, and
authors will be notified after approximately four weeks.
You may obtain more information about Slavic and East European
Peiformance by visiting our website at http/ /web.gc.cuny.edu/ mestc. E-mail
inquiries may be addressed to [email protected].
All Journals are available from ProQuest Information and Learning as
abstracts online via ProQuest information service and the
International Index to the Performing Arts.
All Journals are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and are
members of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
5
FROM THE EDITOR
The winter issue, SEEP, Vol. 30, No. 1, opens with a tribute to Vassily
Aksyonov, who died in the summer of 2009. A major Russian novelist and
short story writer of the twentieth century, Aksyonov was also an extraordinary
playwright whose career in the theatre was cut short by censorship and exile,
but whose impact on the development of Russian drama was nonetheless
significant. The articles begin with Krystyna Lipiriska IHakowicz's account
of her visit to the Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, Massachusetts and her
discussion of that celebrated group's important role as mediator between the
American stage and Polish theatrical culture through their productions of
Bruno Schulz and symposia on Grotowski. Next Natalia Yakubova examines
the fascinating career of the Russian theatrical innovator Ivan Vyrypaev and
analyzes his "trilogy" consisting of Oxygen, Being 2, and Ju!J. Then Howard
Pflanzer reports on his experiences as a spectator and participant in the many
spaces of the 2009 Malta International Theatre Festival in Poznan. Concluding
this section, Beate Hein Bennett looks at a recent multinational event, Pltrywrights
Before the Fall, created by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as part of the
city-wide festival, Performing Revolution, sponsored by the New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts, in commemoration of the fall of communism
in Eastern Europe. The section on reviews starts with a close look at Tadeusz
Slobodzianek's Our Class at Britain's National Theatre co-written by Joshua
Abrams and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, managing editor of SEEP from 1996 to
2000. Next Sascha Just discusses the Polish Futurist Evening, created by the
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as part of Performa 09, that included a staging
of scenes from Bruno Jasieriski's Mannequins' Ball by Allison Troup-Jensen
and interventions by Joanna Warsza, Marek Bartelik, and Krzysztof Zarebski.
Finally, Vessela Warner discusses the state of postcommunist Bulgarian cinema
through an investigation of the recent internationally acclaimed Zift.
6
Slavic and East E uropean Performance Vol. 30, No. 1
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
New York City:
EVENTS
The Czech Center and Prague's Divadlo Minor (Minor Theatre)
performed Bruncvik and His Lion, based off the adaptation by Alois Jirasek at
the Bohemian National Hall on October 16 and 17.
The Hungarian Cultural Center presented Cabaret Magyar (Part II) at
the Galapagos Art Space on October 16.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre performed Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night (Or What You Wilg, at La MaMa from November 12 to November
29.
The Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Abrons Arts
Center presented Wormwood, written and performed by Theatre of the Eighth
Day (Poland) at the Abron Arts Center from November 11 to November 15.
The American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation presented
a performance of Alexandr Pushkin's Little Tragedies at the Baryshn.ikov Art
Center from November 3 to November 14.
Russian director Gary Chern.iakhovsky staged an evening of one-act
plays, Dissident Acts: 3 Plqys at the Barnard College Minor Latham Playhouse
from November 19 to 21. The plays included Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe,
which the playwright dedicated to Vaclav Havel, Stawomir Mrozek's The Police,
and Havel's The Unveiling.
Studio Six Theater Company performed an original adaptation of
Dostoevsky's The Possessed, entitled . . . the it.ry bitsy spider. .. , at the Baryshnikov
Arts Center from November 24 to 28.
7
The Czech Center presented the Czech actress Eliska Balzerova in the
one-woman show Jlfy Brilliant Divorce by Irish-born playwright Geraldine Aron,
performed in Czech at the Bohemian National Hall on December 3. Balzerova
has been performing the play in Prague for almost six years.
The Romanian Cultural Institute and the Department of Drama from
the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU staged a reading of Peca Wire
and Acrobats, by Ana Margineanu. The reading was presented as part of the
hotiNK International Festival of Play Readings at the Tisch School of the
Arts, NYU, on January 30.
Teatr Zar (Wrodaw) performed Caesarean Section: Esscrys on Suicide,
part 2 of the tryptych: Gospels of Childhood (See SEEP Vol. 27, no 2, Spring
2007), directed by Jaroslaw Fret, as part of the Under the Radar Festival at the
Park Avenue Armory from January 7 to 16.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
U.S. Regional:
The Yale School of Drama (New Haven) presented Chekhov's The
directed by Ron Van Lieu at the Yale Repertory Theatre from October
8 to 10.
The Boston Playwrights Theatre presented the New England Russian
Theatre Festival at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre from February 18 to 24.
Plays shown included:
8
Chekhov vs. Chekhov, performed in Spanish by Teatro Prometeo
(Miami, FL), written and directed by Jacqueline Briceno.
Chekhov's Last Love, by Ludmila Anselm, directed by Lau Lapides.
Woman with the Red Kerchief, by Wendy Lement and Firouzeh Mostashari,
directed by Melissa Penley.
Slavic and East European Peiformance VoL 30, No. 1
A Rain if SeagulLs, by Meron Langsner, directed by Lisa Hamel.
Maid No More, by Vladimir Zelevinsky, directed by Anabel Graetz.
Uncle Vc11rya of Marblehead, by Alexander Lonshteyn, directed by Ulrika
Brand.
Three Women and a Bear, by Lialia Chepulite, directed by Brenda
Huggins.
Al!)luta, adapted from the story by Anton Chekhov, written by Gulgun
Karamete and Mark Dalton, directed by Ulrika Brand.
His Russian Wife, by Lyn Coffin, directed by Melanie Garber.
Simon and 1l1asha at Nobu, written and directed by Ulrika Brand.
Vasilisa, The adapted and directed by Anabel Graetz.
A Fable, by Daniil Kharms, directed by Lialia Chepulite.
Misha Chekhov, by Ludmila Anselm, directed by Melanie Garber.
STAGE PRODUCTIONS
International:
Peca F/ou;ers are No VIctims, directed by Pia Furtado, was
presented at the Romanian Cultural Institute, London, on December 8.
The Romanian Cultural Institute presented Matei Viniec's Pockets
Full if Bread, at Riverside Studios, London, on December 11 and 12.
SARTR and Sarajevo Winter presented This is Ionesco, You Fool by
Ferid Karajica at Sarajevski Ratni Teatar, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
on February 7.
9
Theatre-Laboratory @lma@lter (Bulgaria) performed Hamlet Or Three
Boys And One Girl, directed by Nikolay Georgiev at Sarajevski Ratni Teatar,
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on February 10.
FILM
New York City:
The Hungarian Cultural Center in collaboration with the Czech
Center New York, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, the Romanian
Cultural Institute in New York, the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic,
and the Consulate General of Slovenia presented a screening of BEATS OF
FREEDOM or how to overthrow a totalitarian regime with a simple use of home-made
amplijier, as part of Rebel Wtlltz Underground Music from Behind the Iron Curtain at
The New School on November 7.
BMCC Tribeca Performing Art Center presented Russian Film Week
NYC at Lighthouse International Theatre. Films screened included:
10
Pete on the WCfY to heaven (Petva po doroge v tsarstvie nebesnoe), by Nikolai
Dostal at Lighthouse International Theater on November 14.
iWirade (Chudo), by Aleksandr Proshkin at Lighthouse International
Theater on November 14 and at Millenium Theater on November 15
Bury me behind tbe baseboard (Pohoronite me'!Ya pod plintusom), by Sergei
Snezhkin at the Lighthouse International Theater on November 14
and at Millenium Theater on November 15.
Once upon a time in the provinces, (Odnazhdi v provintsit), by Ekaterina
Shagalova at Millenium Theater on November 14, and at Lighthouse
Internation Theater on November 15.
Buben, baraban, by Aleksei Mizgirev atMillenium Theater on No\ember
14 and at Columbia University on November 18.
Slavic and East European Performance VoL 30, No. 1
Tale in the darkness (Skazka pro temnotu), by Nikolai Khomeriki at
Lighthouse International Theater on November 15 and at Columbia
University on November 18.
Tsar, by Pavel Lungin at the School of Visual Arts Theatre on
November 16.
Believe!, by Lidiya Bobrova at the School of Visual Arts Theatre on
November 16
Melocfy for a Street Organ (Melodfya d!Ja Sharmankz), by I<.ira Muratova
(Ukraine) at New York Film Academy on November 17.
Gift to Stalin (Podarok Stalinu), by Rustem Abdrashev at the Brooklyn
Public Library on November 17.
Everybocfy dies but me ( Vse umrut, a ya ostanus), by Valeriya Gai Germanika
at Columbia University on November 18.
The Czech Center New York and BAMcinematik presented the
series New Czech Films at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the 2009 Czech
Independence Day Celebrations. Films screened included:
A Well Paid Walk, (Dobfe placend prochdzka), directed by Milos Forman
(2009), on November 18.
Afraid of the Woij; (Kdopak f?y se vlka directed by Maria
Prochazkova (2008), on November 19.
Citizen Havel, (Obfan directed by Pavel Koutecky and Miroslav
Janek (2008), on November 20.
Tobruk, directed by Vaclav Marhoul (2008), on November 21.
Rene, directed by Helena Tfdtfkova (2008), on November 21.
11
The Karamazovs (Karamazovz), directed by Petr Zelenka (2008), on
NoYember 22.
I'm All Good ( U mne dobry), directed by Jan Hrebejk (2008), on
November 22.
The Romanian Cultural Institute presented the 4'h Annual Romanian
Film Festival in NYC. The festival included:
Videograms of a Revolution, directed by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica,
at the Tribeca Commons on December 4.
Tales From The Golden Age, directed by Cristian Mungiu, Joana Uricaru,
Hanno Hofer, lUzvan Marculescu, and Constantin Popescu at Tribeca
Commons on December 6.
The Czech Center presented the video installation lf You See Something,
by Radim Labuda at the Bohemian National Hall from December 3 to January
15.
The Czech Center screened Babinsk:f, directed by V. C. Vladimirov
(1926). The film was presented with musical accompaniment as part of the
Czech Center's silent film series at the Bohemian National Hall on January 21.
The Romanian Cultural Institute presented a Romanian film series
focusing on the development of Romanian Society through distinct historical
periods at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU. The series
included:
12
The Journry, (Morometiz), directed by Stere Gulea (1987), on January 28.
The Nest, (Cuibul de directed by Horea Popescu (1986),
on February 18.
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 30, No. 1
The Reserve Film and Video Collection presented Documentaries of
Eastern Europe, as part of "Performing Revolution" at the New York Public
Library. The series featured:
FILM
Cold Waves, directed by Alexandru Solomon (Romania, 2007) .
The Man Who Overestimated the Czech SouL- The Escapes of josef Bryks,
directed by Jan Novak (Czech Republic, 2007).
Diamonds in the Dark, directed by Olivia Carrescia (Romania, 1999).
The Old and the Ne1v, directed by Neven Korda and Zemira Alajbegovic
(Slovenia, 1997).
The Orange Alternative, directed by Miroslaw Dembicki (Poland, 1988).
The Dwarves Go to Ukraine (Krasnoludki jadq na Ukrainv, directed by
Miroslaw Dembicki (Poland, 2005).
U.S. Regional:
The University of Pittsburgh held RusDoc: Russian Documentary Films,
at the Bellefield Auditorium from October 11 to October 19. Films screened
included:
The Color of Time, directed by Konstantin Kostov (2007).
9 Forgotten Songs, directed by Galina Krasnoborova (2008).
Vassi!J Ak.ryonov, A Pity You Were Not With Us, directed by Elena
Iakovich and Aleksei Shishov (2009).
The Word, directed by Sergei Miroshnichenko (2009).
13
A4J Album, directed by Ekaterina Piskareva (2008).
lfya Muromets, directed by Aleksei Shikhov (2003).
I'm a Genius: Nikolai Glazkov, directed by Aleksei Burykin (2008).
The Slavic Languages and Literature Department at the University of
Michigan screened Terazja, directed by Anna Jadowska (Poland, 2005), at the
International Institute on November 1.
The Czech Center New York toured the mini-film festival When No
One Is Returning: The Films of Karel Vachek. Film screenings included:
Elective Affinities (1968) at the Golden Auditorium, Colgate University,
Hamilton, NY on November 6.
Moravian He/las (1963) at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut,
on November 3, and the Golden Auditorium, Colgate University,
Hamilton, on November 6.
The Slavic Languages and Literature Department at the University
of Michigan presented Polish Film Fest! at the Michigan and State Theaters
(Ann Arbor, Michigan) on November 14 and November 15. Films screened
included:
Gun for Hire (Pistole/ do directed by Piotr Zar!;;bski (1997).
General Nil, directed by Ryszard Bugajski (2009).
Coming Out in Poland, directed by Slawomir Grunberg (2008).
Scratch (Rysa), directed by Michal Rosa (2008).
Modjeska-Woman Triumphant, directed by Basia Myszynski (2009).
14 Slavic and East European Peiformance VoL 30, No. 1
The Romanian Cultural Institute premiered Medal of Honor, by Peter Calin
Netzer (Romania), as part of the Palm Spring International Film Festival, Palm
Spring, CA, from January 11 to 13.
FILM
International:
The British Film Institute presented the London Film Festival from
October 15 to 28. Films screened included:
Sweet &sh, directed by Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 2008).
Chick, directed by Michal Socha (Poland, 2008).
Don't Look Back, directed by Julius Onah (Poland, 2009).
The Happiest Girl in the World, directed by Radu Jude (Romania, 2009).
Help Gone Mad, directed by Boris Khlebnikov (Russia, 2009).
Morphia, directed by Alexei Balabanov (Russia, 2008).
Osadne, directed by Marko Skop (Slovakia, Czech Republic, 2009).
Protektor, directed by Marek Najbrt (Czech Republic, 2009).
A Room and a Ha!f, directed by Andrei Khrzhanovsky (Russia, 2008).
St. George Shoots the Dragon, directed by Sraan Dragojevic (Serbia,
Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, 2009).
Wo!t.Y, directed by Vassily Sigarev (Russia, 2009).
15
The Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow) presented the
Dokument 7 Festival of Polish films. Films screened included:
A Bar at Victoria Station, directed by Dawid Leszek (2003), October 22.
Criterion, directed by Marcin Grabowicz (2009), October 22.
China's Wild WCst, directed by Urszula Pontikos (2008), October 23.
Yodok Stories, directed by Andrzej Fidyk (2008), October 25.
Pacific Cinematheque (Vancouver) presented as part of The Little
Capitalist Tetralogy, a screening of Who will watch the watchman? Dalibor, or the kq
to uncle Tom's cabin, by Karel Vachek (Czech Republic, 2002) on November 8.
CONFERENCES, ETC.
Extremely Hungary and WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Space presented
"Room With A View: 1989 20 Years On," as part of WNYC's the NEXT
New York Conversation series, on November 27. The symposium fearured
journalist Michael R. Meyer, Professor Andras Boz6ki, and writer and lecrurer
Andras Szanto.
The Brooklyn Public Library presented a discussion of Yul Brynner
with film critic Oleg Sulkin as part of their Russian Film Series: Russian
Hollywood. The discussion was held at the Brooklyn Public Library on
February 2.
The University of Chicago hosted the symposium "New Histories of
Modern Art: The Eastern European Avant-Gardes," at the Franke Institute for
the Humanities at the Regenstein Library, from February 4 to 6.
The Harriman Institute at Columbia University, in association with the
Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Romanian Cultural Institute in New York,
and Austrian Cultural Forum, presented the symposium ''After Communism:
Achievement and Disillusionment since 1989" at Faculty House on February
26 and 27. The symposium was a part of "Performing Revolution in Central
and Eastern Europe," a performing arts festival presented between December
2009 and March 2010 by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The symposium included panels on dissent, postcommunism, and narratives
about a communist past, and featured participants including Adam Michnik,
Alfred Gusenbauer, Erhard Busek, Ira Katznelson, Archie Brown, Katherine
Verdery, Stephen Kotkin, Stephen Sestanovich, and Vladimir Tismaneanu.
Compiled by Stefanie Jones
17
BOOKS RECEIVED
Albertova, Helena. josef Svoboda Scenographer. Tr. Barbara Day, I veta J usova,
and Tamara Vosecka. Prague: Theatre Institute, 2008. 328 pages. Contains
five parts covering Svoboda's career, a list of the 265 illustrations (many in
color) included in the volume, a brief chronology of Svoboda's life and work,
a selected bibliography, a list of works, and a register of names.
Delger, Janusz. Witkacego Portret Wielokrotny: Szkice i materia& do biograjii
(1918-1939). Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2009. 558 pages.
Includes fifteen chapters, 150 pages of letters from Witkacy to five clifferent
correspondents, an appenclix of letters and documents about Witkacy's
time in Russia, a list of Witkacy's published letters to 65 correspondents, a
bibliographical note, an index of people, an index of the 140 illustrations in
the book, and a table of contents.
Gerould, Daniel, ed. Plqywrights Before the FaiL- Eastern European Drama in Times
if Revolution. N.Y.: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications, 2009. 439
pages. With a preface by Dragan !<laic. Contains: from Poland, Slawomir
Mrozek, Portrait, translated by Jacek Laskowski, with an introduction by
Daniel Gerould; from Slovenia, Dusan Jovanovic, Military Secret, translated
and with an introduction by Ivan Talijancic; from Hungary, Gyorgy Spiro,
Chicken Head, translated and with an introduction by Eugene Brogyanyi; from
Czechoslovakia, Karel Steigerwald, Sorrow, Sorrow, Fear, the Pit and the Rope,
translated by Roger Downey and Stepan S. Simek and with an introduction by
Simek; and from Romania, Matei i ~ n i e c Horses at the Windmv , translated by
Alison Sinclair, with an introduction by Moshe Yassur.
Lesiak, Milan Dariusz. Polska Nauka o Teatrze tv latach 1945-1975. Wrodaw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwcrsytetu Wrodawskiego, 2008. 534 pages. Contains
an introduction, eight chapters, and a conclusion; a calendar, annotated
biographies, an alphabetical list of works; an index of names, and a list of the
twelve photographs included.
18 Slavic and East European Performance VoL 30, No. 1
Marranca, Bonnie and Malgorzata Semil, editors. New Europe: Pft!JS from
the Continent. N.Y: PAJ, 2010. 399 pages. With an introduction by Bonnie
Marranca. A collection of seven plays exploring issues of terrorism,
immigration, youth, globalization, families, and postcommunist culture in the
years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and expansion of the European Union.
It includes three Eastern European plays: from Poland, Malgorzata Sikorska-
Miszczuk, The Squirrel-Man, translated by Jadwiga Kosicka; from Macedonia,
Stefanovski, Hotel Europa (written in English); and from the Czech Republic,
Petr Zelenka, Tales of Ordinary Madness, translated by Stepan S. Simek.
19
IN MEMORIAM
Vassily Pavlovich Aksyonov August 20, 1932-July 9, 2009
Aksyonov was born in 1932 in Kazan, the capital of Tartarstan on
the Volga, where his parents-Pave! Aksyonov and Yevgenia Ginzburg-were
prominent local party officials. In 1937 during Stalin's purges they were both
arrested, sentenced for treason to eighteen years of imprisonment, and sent to
the gulags. Vassily went first to live with a grandmother, was then taken to a
state orphanage, rescued by an uncle, and finally was reunited with his mother
in 194 7, after her sentence had been commuted to exile. In the 1960s Yevgenia
Ginzburg wrote her memoirs telling of her ordeal, journry into the Whirlwind
and Within the Whirlwind, which were published in the West and frequently
dramatized, but appeared in the USSR only after her death.
Vassily graduated from medical school in 1956 and practiced as a
doctor for three years, but after discovering jazz and American popular culture,
20 Slavic and East European Performance Vol 30, No. 1
he was drawn to the new styles, fashions, and rebellious ways emanating from
the West. He abandoned medicine for writing about his contemporaries and
the challenges they faced in trying to realize their dreams of greater personal
freedom and their longings for the utopia that the Revolution had promised,
but failed to deliver. During the cultural thaw in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
Aksyonov became the literary spokesman for the generation of disaffected
Soviet youth which came of age in the postwar period. His highly influential
stories, Colleagues (1960) , A Ticket to the Stars (1961), and Oranges from Morocco
(1963), written in a colorful colloquial language full of hipster slang, effectively
captured the spirit of the times. His later fiction-The Steel Bird (1979), The Burn
(1980), and The Island of Crimea (1981)-moved to greater fantasy, satire, and
parody, full of allusions to the underground masterpieces of the Russian avant-
garde that had been blotted out by state-enforced socialist realism.
Aksyonov spoke up for the freedom and independence of the writer
and increasingly clashed with the authorities, drawing a pointed rebuke from
Khruschev. In 1979 he edited the unauthorized almanac Metropol, for which he
lost his position in the Writers Union and his ability to publish in the USSR.
He emigrated to the US in 1980 and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.
In America Aksyonov taught Russian literature for twenty-four years, first at
Goucher College and then at George Mason University. His Russian citizenship
was restored in 1990. After retiring from teaching in 2004, he moved to France
and alternated living in Biarritz and Moscow. He died in Russia in 2009 after a
long illness resulting from a stroke.
Although he is best known as a short story writer and novelist,
Aksyonov made a major contribution to the Russian theatre with the five plays
that he wrote in the 1960s and 70s, which serve as a link between the pre-war
revolutionary Soviet avant-garde and the new Russian theatre of the late 1980s
and post-communist era.
Restricted by the censor to a very limited number of showings
in Moscow, Alwqys on Sale (1965) Aksyonov's theatrical debut, received a
landmark performance at Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre, directed by Oleg
Efremov and starring Mikhail Kozakov as the sappy naive idealist and Oleg
Tabakov as the cynical charismatic journalist, doubling as a loud-mouthed
virago kiosk vendor. The action took place inside and around a prototypical
Moscow apartment building that constituted the single setting; the ridiculous
follies and vices of its inhabitants portrayed by Aksyonov became a microcosm
21
for the entire USSR. The truculent, bawdy play and high-spirited performance
transported spectators far from the earnest platitudes of contemporary Soviet
drama and back to the great Russian tradition of grotesque satire exemplified
by Sukhovo-Kobylin's Death of Tare/kin and Mayakovsky's Bedbug.
Aksyonov's second play-Your Murderer, '.:A.n Anti-Alcoholic Comecfy in
Eight Scenes with a Prologue and an Epilogue," a satirical fable about art, power, mass
culture, and the state that draws inspiration from Gogol's Taras Bulba-was
banned and never staged in Russia. It was first published in English translation
in Performing Arts journal in 1977. It appears in the 1981 collected edition of
Aksyonov's plays, published in Russian by Ardis (Ann Arbor, Michigan), as Kiss,
Orchestra, Fish, Sausage. The volume also includes Aristophaniana with Frogs, 'j-4
Burlesque in the Traditions of Antiquity" (1969), which uses motifs from Lysis/rata
and The Frogs to explore the plight of the artist persecuted by totalitarian
dictatorship. The volume also contains The Four Temperaments (1979), a science
fiction drama about life after death, first published in Metropol, and Aksyonov's
final play that the author knew could not be staged in the USSR, The Heron
(1979), a parody of The Three Sisters that stretches the dramatic form by including
prose poems and extensive stage directions. It was first staged in Paris at the
Palais de Chaillot by Antoine Vitez in 1984.
Soviet censorship and state repression cut short what would have
been for Aksyonov a brilliant career as a playwright. Yet even so, the five plays
that he did write played an important role in the history of Russian theatre
by reestablishing contact between modern Soviet drama and the great line of
Russian and early Soviet satirists, starting with Gogol, Sukhovo-Kobylin, and
Salrykov-Shschedrin and continuing through Mayakovsky, Erdman, Kharms,
Vvedensky, Shvarts, and Bulgakov. Aksyonov's plays are brilliant instances of
Bakhtin's carnivalesque and dialogic, mixing widely divergent linguistic and
stylistic levels, and full of immense comic verve and satiric invention.
Daniel Gerould
22 Slavic and E ast E11ropean Performance VoL 30, No. 1
THE DOUBLE EDGE THEATRE:
EASTERN EUROPEAN ALLEGIANCES,
RESONANCES, AND ALLIANCES
Krystyna Lipiiiska Illakowicz
The organizing principle of theatre in European culture has always
been the event and spirit of holiday. In ancient Greece and Rome, people
gathered for the excitement of theatre festivals. In the Middle Ages, the
arrival of a theatre troupe brought the townsfolk together in order to rejoice
as they watched the actors performing familiar scenes. That same spirit of
joyful participation in the event is at the core of every performance created
by Double Edge Theatre located in Ashfield, Massachusetts. "The Farm," as
the theatre is called in the Ashfield vernacular, attracts audiences from a huge
radius on the East Coast; people from the surrounding areas of Springfield
and Northampton-as well as from Maine, New York, New Haven, and
Baltimore-show up at the performances. The spirit of community unites all
these people in the unique experience of sharing in a real theatrical banquet.
And there were many such banquets in 2009. The Cycle performed by Double
Edge Theatre through March, April, and May was called The Garden o/ Intimacy
and Desire. In the summer the group performed the enchanting Arabian Nights,
and in the fall they returned to The Garden.
The Garden o/ Intimacy and Desire consisted of three pieces-The
Unpossessed, Republic of Dreams, and The Disappearance--that Stacy Klein,
together with her collaborators Matthew Glassman and Carlos Uriona, created
during the period of the past nine years (roughly dating back to 2001). Other
co-creators of this cycle are Carroll Durand, Hayley Brown, and Jeremy
Louise Eaton. Here I want to focus mainly on Republic o/ Dreams, inspired by
Bruno Schulz's prose. Since I saw these performances many times in different
phases of their stage existence, I find it more appropriate to reflect on their
development than talk about their ultimate shape. In fact, it is movement
and transformation that make Double Edge performances so special. The
fascinating aspect of Klein's work is the idea of experimentation, the spirit of
inquiry, and the creative curiosity that drive all of her artistic endeavors. This
dedication to exploration and discovery endows Double Edge's work with a
truly living spirit. The performances change and mutate, some scenes fall out,
24 Slavic and East European Peifom!ance VoL 30, No. 1
Carlos Uriona (Father Mask), Republic of Dreams,
based on Bruno Schulz's life and works, Double Edge Theatre, 2009
25
others replace them, but the performances constantly grow, becoming more
resonant and richer with subtle meanings and contexts.
The Unpossessed has been continually changing over the years,
unfolding its multiple layers of political and social subtexts. Its two characters,
Quixote (Carlos Uriona) and Sancho Panza (Matthew Glassman), create an
unforgettable pair through their incessant struggles, rage, and helpless pitfalls.
Other characters in this exquisite piece were played by Carol Durand-who
was also the costume designer- Hayley Brown, and Jeremy Louise Eaton.
The first performances, from the beginning of the 2000s and the 2004 version
shown in New York at La MaMa, were building on the revolutionary spirit of
the 1960s and 70s by calling for the reawakening of the will to change in an
American society desensitized by consumerist complacency and immersed in
self-indulging slumber. The most recent version combines this revolutionary
spirit with idealism in order to invoke the spirit of hope especially perceptible
in the closing scene of the November performances. In the performances after
the 2008 presidential election, actors leave the stage carrying burning candles
in a gesture of homage to those who had visions and dreams but whose
endeavors have to be continued by others. (In fact, that theme resurfaces in the
third piece of the cycle, The Disappearance.)
Republic of Dreams matured over the years with questions concerning
the relationship between the individual and the collective. Of course, the
idea of individual freedom and the right to develop one's own dreams in the
political, social, and personal sense unites all three pieces of the Cycle. The
first sketches of Republic of Dreams were conceived at the beginning of the
2000s and presented at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York,
returning there in 2007 during the Bruno Schulz exhibition in New York.
Stacy Klein notes in the program to the Cycle that her "love affair with Bruno
Schulz began [much earlier] in 1985" when she discovered the visionary, fluid,
meandering, and strikingly visual world of Schulz. "Circling and spiraling
through the imaginative genius of Schulz" helped Klein to find a shape for her
own theatrical visions, which reject the straightforward narrative and instead
evolve spatially into a patchwork of deeply evocative and beautifully composed
scenes endowed with deep tones and meanings. Another important impulse
for creating Republic of Dreams was Matthew Glassman's and Carlos Uriona's
fascination with Schulz. Klein mentions how, after she shared her interest in
Schulz with her co-creators, "once again the Schulzian world found enormous
26 Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 30, No. 1
Carlos Uriona, Matthew Glassman, and Jeremy Louise Eaton, Republic of Drea!1ls,
based on Bruno Schulz's life and works, Double Edge Theatre, 2009
27
resonance with a Double Edge core of actors." Glassman, exhibiting unusual
resemblance to Schulz, became the embodiment of Schulz himself (and his
alter ego Joseph) and Uriona personified the Father. In the beginning stages of
Republic, the character of the visionary, uncontrollable, omnipresent Father was
most visible. With the Mother, the Father sat at the breakfast table while the
Emperor Franz Josef- at the edge of an armoire that was a central prop in that
early version of the performance--changed unnoticeably into an infantili zed
lover of birds flying and swimming through the air in his girly tutu.
The later performances expanded the role of Joseph/Schulz/
Glassman, who at one point was almost carrying the whole load of the spectacle
on his shoulders as a narrator and the main protagonist. It was Glassman's role
that evolved most noticeably over the years. The recent versions of Republic
show the Joseph/Schulz figure fully integrated with other figures such as
Bianca, Rudolph, Father, and the whole array of mannequins. His monologues
turn into swift exchanges, and the words, in a way, translate into movement and
music, so that the performance becomes more dynamic and multi-dimensional.
Text-oriented parts are forcefully intercepted by non-verbal scenes, so that
almost every spoken part is countered by or connected to the visualized
movement or gesture; thus the performance truly expands spatially, guiding the
viewer through the multilayered texture and polyvalent meanings of Schulz's
text. Some new scenes like Joseph's dance with the prostitutes (before Joseph
only danced with Bianca, the mannequin) increase the dynamics of the piece.
It acquires more lightness and radiance and becomes endowed with a truly
magical force.
Matthew Glassman masterfully handles his difficult role as if juggling
words and movements and integrating them into "the dance" of the whole.
This way the whole spectacle acquires balance, swiftness, and lightness. All
characters appear and mutate, create dissonances and moments of awe, but all
the time they work together, beautifully orchestrated as if in a musical piece full
of expressive discordant tones and charming dissonances.
Even the sinister autobiographical element relating to Schulz's murder
by a Nazi officer on the street of his hometown, Drohobycz, in the latter
version acquires a more metaphoric quality. Previously, the shot sounded once
at the end of the performance, realistically evoking Schulz's death. In the latest
version, the shot sounds twice, at the beginning and at the end, thus losing its
realistic reference, but at the same time gaining a deeper and more universally
28 Slavic and EaJt European VoL 30, No. 1
charged tone and meaning.
On November 15, 2009 the Cycle was performed for the last time,
but it is merely the last time in this particular shape, because all performances
created by Double Edge continually evolve, and perhaps the next year will
bring further transformations.
2009 was very special for the company since this year was celebrated
as Jerzy Grotowski Year. We celebrated the 50'h anniversary of the foundation
of the Theatre Laboratory /Teatr Laboratorium, in Wrodaw, Poland and
commemorated the 10'h anniversary of Jerzy Grotowski's death. Double Edge
has a special connection to Grotowski's legacy because of its own training
methods and through Rena 1'v1irecka, one of the leading actors in Grotowski's
theatre, who was one of Stacy Klein's teachers. Rena Mirecka participated in all
productions of the Laboratory Theatre from 1959 to 1984 (when Grotowski's
company dissolved) and was responsible for the so-called plastic exercises.
Rena Mirecka arrived in Ashfield for the panel discussion "Bold
Women in the Theatre" on April26, following the production of the Cycle the
previous day. Apart from Rena Mirecka, the panel gathered eminent women
directors such as Muriel and Gloria Miguel from the Spiderwoman Theater,
a Native American feminist theatre group, Rachel Chavkin, a young director
from New York's Theater of the Emerging American Moment, and Carroll
Durand, who is the stage and costume designer and co-founder of Double
Edge. Martha Coigney, a long time Director of ITI (International Theatre
Institute) and a great friend of Polish theatre, and Stefania Gardecka, who was
associated with Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre from 1966 to 1984 and is one
of the founders of the Grotowski Institute in Wrodaw, also joined the panel.
The discussion focused on the issues of directing as women and on
the panelists' own ways of doing theatre. Some directors such as Miguel or
Chavkin stressed the mission of carrying on the stories from one generation to
the next or from one culture to the other, thus facilitating cultural transmission
both synchronically and diachronically. Stacy I<.1ein and Carroll Durand pointed
to the identity issues and the significance of the human interrelations in their
work.
Rena Mirecka's short talk, which can really be called a performance,
was definitely at the center of the meeting. She mesmerized all listeners with
her estranged (nearly Brechtian) modulating voice, sometimes almost singing,
at times whispering, and her body moving in space following the unusual tones
29
of her voice. The main theme of her talk was about travel through different
possibilities of one's own creations and thus enabling the actor to find his or
her individual way. For those who have never seen Rena Mirecka act, her talk
was like a distant approximation of her stage persona. Seeing her perform, I
could not stop thinking about Grotowski's famous concept of theatre as a total
act. Mirecka, through her short talk, created a very special atmosphere that
totally absorbed all the participants of the meeting.
A series of similar panels called Conversations, moderated by Philip
Arnoult, a longtime collaborator of Double Edge, also followed the November
performances of the Cycle. The Conversations considered such aspects of the
theatre work as Foundations of Laboratory Theatre (November 1), Staging
God and Policy (November 8), and Approaches to Training (November 15).
Slavic connections are always strong in the Double Edge Theatre, and the last
conversation series devoted to training hosted two representatives of these
cultures: Gennady Abramov from Moscow and Jarosl:aw Fret from Wrodaw.
Abramov, who is one of the leaders in contemporary Russian performance and
dance and a founder of Expressive Plastic Movement Training, stressed the
idea of a body as an instrument. Bringing together Russian aesthetic traditions
from the beginning of the twentieth century such as Meyer hold's biomechanics
and Grotowski's methods, Abramov experiments with the potential of the
ostranenie/estrangement technologies in activating the energetic centers of the
body. Abramov's revolutionary practices, forbidden in Soviet Russia, are now a
driving force for the new generations of Russian performers.
Jarosl:aw Fret, a director of ZAR company and the head of the Jerzy
Grotowski Institute in Wrodaw, commented mosdy on his own work in which
he builds the performance out of the vibrations of voice and breath from
nearly forgotten ritual songs and combining them with movement and image.
His theatre practices a specific archeology when excavating the scraps of
early Christian chants preserved orally in some communities of the Caucasus,
Georgia, Corsica, or Iran, and later developing their performances around such
basic sounds, movements, and objects.
Listening to all of the Conversations was a real feast, showing t he
scope of Double Edge's activity, combining the most concrete, serious, and
dedicated production of a theatrical artifact and a multifaceted community
activity. This combination of art and life creates what Stacy Klein calls "living
culturc"-a sense of belonging and sharing on a local and global level. Projects
31
such as the Conversations bring together performers from different cultures
and distant corners of the world such as South Africa and Argentina, Poland
and Russia, California and London. In a way, Double Edge performers develop
a very specific "agricultural" project on their Farm: they cultivate culture and
community that then grows and expands way beyond the Ashfield area.
32 Slavic and East European Peiformance T/ol. 30, No. 1
IVAN VYRYPAEV: A CULTURAL CANNIBAL
Natalia Yakubova
Ivan Vyrypaev (b. 1974) began to write plays in his home town of
Irkutsk (Dreams, 1999, Town where I, 2000, Valentine Dqy, 2001). However,
thanks to the trendy festivals of new Russian drama, he very soon became
famous in Moscow and moved there. Due to the fact that his first play, Dreams,
was based on authentic interviews with drug addicts, in the first years of his
Moscow career, Vyrypaev affiliated with Theatre.doc, an open venue founded
in 2001 concentrating mainly on verbatim theatre. His decision was dictated
not so much by any affinity to documentary theatre as simply by the fact that
Theatre.doc-thanks to the efforts of British colleagues from the Royal Court
Theatre, who promoted verbatim in Russia, and the support of many Russian
enthusiasts, who adopted this strategy as the most appropriate way of exploring
the new reality of post-Soviet life-had become one of the most important
centers of innovative playwriting and theatre-making. The stage at Theatre. doc
came to life in a basement of an ordinary apartment block, cleaned up and
reconstructed by a group of volunteers; all of this was a reminder of the heroic
period of the perestroika studio movement.
Vyrypaev took part in many volunteer activities connected with
Theatre.doc and played in some productions as an actor. It is also here that he
presented the Moscow version of Dreams, originally performed in Irkutsk, and
then his first real success- O.rygen (2002). O.rygen, however, moved very soon
to clubs and then to the newly- founded and soon fashionable Praktika Theatre
where Vyrypaev presented his new plays Being 2 (2004) and Ju!J (2006). The
stage of Praktika occupies an equally small basement (coincidentally, at the
other end of the same huge block as Theatre.doc), but because it was founded
by one of the most influential theatre magnates of Russia, Edward Boyakov,
who is also the founder of the prestigious Golden Mask prize, it bears no
traces of the noble poverty of the "old-fashioned" underground with its air
of volunteerism.
The press eagerly discussed Vyrypaev's metamorphosis, especially
when, between Being 2 and Ju!J, he also became a successful ftlmmaker. His
film Euphoria (2006) won many prizes at Russian and international festivals.
Many thought that Vyrypaev did not resist the temptations of fame and that
33
Alexander Bergman (Psychiatrist/Being 1) and Svetlana Ivanova (\X'oman/Being 2) in Ivan Vyrypaev's Being 2,
Praktika Theatre, Moscow, 2004

a'
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Lil

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Ju!J could be regarded as an act of ultimate self-glorification. In any case, the
short period when he was the artistic-director of Praktika and staged his own
productions there will probably remain the golden age of this theatre. After
leaving Praktika, Vyrypaev made a film version of O:rygen (2008) and created
the stage play Understanding (2008). This second performance was dedicated
to the Kazakh poet Abay Kunanbaev and included his poems recited in the
original language and also some poetry in Polish in reflecting Vyrypaev's recent
interest in the Polish actress Karolina Gruszka.
Vyrypaev's activities have been quite varied. Here, however, I wish
only to focus on three plays that I call a "trilogy," begun at Theatre.doc and
finished at Praktika: O:rygen, Being 2, and Ju!J. Each of the three plays was staged
by Viktor Ryzhakov, the director chosen by Vyrypaev to control the production
of his plays, even though Being 2 and Ju!J had originally been commissioned
by other directors. Therefore, I believe that Ryzhakov's productions reflect
Vyrypaev's understanding of the theatrical structure of his own plays. If I
refer to these three productions as Vyrypaev's and not as Ryzhakov's, it is not
to diminish the role of the director, but rather to highlight the fact that the
analysis of these "authorized" productions can reveal Vyrypaev's goals both as
a playwright and as a man of theatre.
In Russian theatre criticism, Vyrypaev's career is often considered as
a continuation of what another important figure in the Russian new theatre,
Yevgeniy Grishkovets, introduced a few years earlier: personal confession as a
form of autobiographical storytelling in the theatre. Although Grishkovets's
success was probably an important step in preparing the public for Vyrypaev's
work, another influence, that of verbatim theatre, has been much more
important.
With O:rygen (2002) Vyrypaev begins to fashion himself as an artist
who has assimilated verbatim. This absorption is evident in both his interviews
and the structure of his plays. The text of O:rygen seems to arrange rather
chaotic streams of speech according to certain motifs (in this case, the Ten
Commandments), thus using a quite familiar technique from verbatim
productions. In O:rygen, the difference from verbatim is that the actors are not
meant to represent real people whose "streams of speech" they voice. Rather,
the performers simultaneously are themselves and play a sophisticated game
with the fictional characters who carry on the naive discourse. The performers'
personal connection to these fictional constructs seems to be stronger than
35
in the traditional actor/character relationship. Despite the fact that the actors
play themselves with the help of the fictional characters, their message is very
personal: they are inventing fictional characters precisely because they need
them to construct their own confessions.
The naive discourse, according to Vyrypaev, is a discourse that
is able to express the power of desire which would escape any attempt at
rationalization ("oxygen" of the title is an alternate name for such desire).
Surely, not only so-called nai:ve people, but also sophisticated people such as
Vyrypaev's performers, can desire. "Sophisticated" desires, however, have less
of a chance to become visible, because they are rarely pursued to the ultimate
realization in action. For example, "sophisticated people" do not kill as the
result of a desire. Conversely, the desires of "naive people" are more visible
because they actually perform the action needed to fulfill the wish. The stories
in O;,rygen always return to the decision of "my acquaintance Sasha" to kill his
wife because he met a girl-also called Sasha-and needed her as "oxygen".
The desires of naive people are also visible because-as many verbatim
productions have demonstrated-they are able to talk about their actions with
thousands of hyper-realistic details, while "sophisticated people" remain aware
that desire surpasses any verbal expression. Thus, naive discourse seems able
to map the boundaries of desire, while the language of sophisticated subjects,
without the aid of the fictitious characters to voice their longings, is unable to
do so.
In the next play, Being 2, the reference to Theatre.doc is quite direct.
At the beginning of the play, Vyrypaev himself speaks to the audience in a
quasi-improvisational manner, as if he were just informing them about "the
rules of the game": he explains that he has received a letter from a patient in a
psychiatric clinic, Antonina Velikanova, who wrote a play in which she herself
appeared as Lot's Wife and her psychiatrist, Arkady Ilich, appeared as God.
Velikanova decided to commission Vyrypaev to produce her play because she
knew that he worked in a theatre where "even those who were imprisoned
for murder could have their work staged." The reference is obviously to
Theatre.doc where Vyrypaev directed the readings of A{y Cay Friend- a play
by the prisoner Ekaterina Kovaleva, serving a sentence for the murder of her
husband-which was subsequently produced at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Along with other marginalized people, prisoners-and most typically,
female prisoners-were the heroes of one of the first verbatim productions at
VJ
-._J
Rocket to the sun, Alexander Bergman and Svetlana Ivanova in Ivan Vyrypaev's Being 2,
Theatre.doc, Crimes if Passion, directed by Galina Sinkina. I think that in Being
2 Vyrypaev refers explicitly to Crimes if Passion, correctly reading it as a brave
effort to reveal that the artist-researcher chooses the marginalized persons not
only because he or she is motivated by an altruistic mission to expose "the dark
sides" of society, but also as an egocentric means of revealing his or her own
desires.
In any case, the play attributed to Antonina Velikanova deals mainly
with her falling prey to the power of desire, a power which is a human
trademark but also godlike. If Vyrypaev does not claim authorship of this play,
it is because it would then lose its impact as a document. Antonina Velikanova
is presented as being both a psychiatric patient and a woman, indicating the
excessive concern with authenticity usually found in verbatim theatre.
In Vyrypaev's plays, women are not just desired, but also equated with
desire itself (as in where the female Sasha is called oxygen). In order
to possess feminine desire, Vyrypaev's male characters must "melt" into the
woman, as is suggested by the same name--Sasha-for both the male and
female character in In the text of Being 2, the male character dreams
of "going completely crazy," and due to conversing with his female patient he
successfully arrives at that point. By the end of the play supposedly written
by Velikanova, the doctor begins to tell the same kind of surrealistic tales as
his female patient. His tale is a sort of a sacrilegious "matrioshka" variant of
the book of Genesis: the god of this version creates a little clay man, places
the man between the buttocks of a giant, who, in turn, is just a creation of the
god's imagination, while the god locates himself within the sun.
1
After this
nearly surreal parable, the doctor delivers a delirious monologue about melting
into the sun. He eagerly accepts his patient's invitation to join her in her rocket,
and the play ends with the two beings flying off to the sun. There is no special
effect or set piece to represent the rocket; rather the woman becomes the
rocket as she embraces her passenger on this imaginary flight to the sun. To
paraphrase Vyrypaev, she is the sun herself.
Throughout the play, large piles of salt accumulate and begin to
look like a white-hot cosmic landscape (set design by Dmitry Razumov).
The characters directly refer to the salt as the fate of Lot's Wife-one of the
identities of the female being 2. By the end of the play, the salt becomes a
metaphor of melting. This is not the salt of Sodom and Gomorrah that stands
solidified in the desert, but the salt that thaws ice, turning solid to liquid. The
Polina Agureeva in Ivan Vyrypaev'sju!J,
39
male character has received his wish and simultaneously melts into both the
sun and the woman.
Absorption is also the main activity of the hero of the story narrated
in Ju!J, the third play of "the trilogy." It is the chaotic monologue of an old
man who tells the story of his trip to the madhouse after the murder of his
neighbor. During this journey, he seems to kill everybody who stands in his
way- interestingly enough, not only those who represent danger, but also those
for whom he feels sympathy. At the end of the play, already in the psychiatric
clinic, he eats a nurse, with whom he has fallen in love.
"The storytelling man" in this play is created by Vyrypaev in accord
with the model of the ideal hero of verbatim theatre, which tends to give
voice to the most marginalized subjects. Vyrypaev partly parodies the verbatim
aesthetics, partly appropriates it. In Ju!J, the speaking character is an old man,
a murderer, and a cannibal who eats a woman, but the actor who portrays
him is female-a casting choice that is explicitly defined in the script. Polina
Agureeva, the female actor, appears on stage beautifully estranged, wearing
concert attire. It is interesting how often the reviewers of the play mentioned
the fact that Agureeva, after the most indigestible pieces of the text, would
smile, wipe her lips, and drink a glass of water. For me, this behavior is not so
much a reference to the aesthetic formula of a classical concert, as it is a sign
that this performer is a cannibal who has eaten a "real man" in the telling of
his story.
All three dramas are about metaphysical insatiability. In the first play,
this phenomenon is called "oxygen starvation," while the word "oxygen"
designates everything that gives vitality to life. In the second, it is expressed by
being 2's simultaneous longings to differentiate herself from her creator and
to absorb him. In ju!J, it appears in the figure of the cannibal who consumes
everything in his way. In each of these three plays, however, insatiability and
absorption are not only present in the dramatic content, but also on a meta-
theatrical level when these "stories by other people" are narrated by actors.
In Vyrypaev's plays, there is a radical estrangement of the performers from
the fictional marginal persons they seem to give voice. Thus, the performance
doesn't concern representation of true "Others" (as is the case with verbatim),
rather the "Others' discourses" are appropriated for totally different ends.
I think, however, that Vyrypaev's work is not only about aesthetic
parasitical practices, but also about a genuine exploration the Other- although
the results may remain dubious. The fact that this Other turns to be only quasi-
real-actually a construction created and then consumed by the subject of
culture-can be read not only as Vyrypaev's refusal to explore reality as it is, but
also as quite an honest belief that even when we think that we research "reality
as it is," we are doomed to construct it and then forced into contact with the
image we ourselves have created. Although this conviction is disputable, it
surpasses many naive attempts to research and represent the Other directly, as
surely often occurred at Theatre.doc. The "subjects of culture" that Vyrypaev's
performances enact are presented as living in a too-civilized milieu that make
them long to meet the Others. Then if Vyrypaev presents these "subjects
of culture" as greedily absorbing the Other, it can be read as a challenge to
those who in good faith-and in a quite protectionist manner-try to research
Others. But it also can be read as a gesture of self-irony: Vyrypaev, in a way,
acknowledges that the scope of his penetration of reality is quite limited, but
at least he maps these limitations.
NOTE
1. The title of the play is often translated as Genesis 2. In the Russian, f?ytie
refers both to the Russian title of the first book of the Bible (and, so, to the story of the
creation of the world) and to the noun "being." For the purposes of this text, I prefer
"being" for the translation, because I think that iris important to notice the dichotomy
between being 1 and being 2. It is also important, however, to keep in mind that another
facet of the title ironically suggests that the text contains a heretical version of Genesis.
41
2009 MALTA INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL:
THEATRICAL SPACES
Howard Pflanzer
During the 2009 Malta International Theatre Festival in Poznan,
Poland from June 22 to June 29, city spaces, both indoors and out, became
theatrical stages. There were productions in traditional theatre spaces and in
places like an abandoned soccer field, the courtyard of an old slaughterhouse,
a convention center, a bridge over the river, and the streets and squares of the
city. Audiences were everywhere, both viewing and participating in a wide range
of theatrical events. Most of these audience members were young and very
excited about seeing innovative theatrical performances, but there was always a
contingent of adventurous older theatre viewers at each of the performances
I attended. The majority of the performing groups were Polish, although there
were artists in the festival from Italy, France, and Austria.
The first performance I saw, Jarzenie (Agl01v), took place in the black
box performance space of the Theatre of the Eighth Day on June 23. This
confined indoor space was a good location for creating a strong sensory,
auditory, and visual experience for the viewer. The action in the piece was
very close to the audience. Scenes and movement interludes took place in the
front and in the aisles. I was gripped by this hour-long piece, which produced
a hypnotic effect. ]arzenie by Teatr Palm era Eldritcha, directed with a scenario
by Palmer Eldritch, music by Patryk Lichota, and produced by the Theatre
of the Eighth Day and Srodek Swiata (The Middle of the World) Artistic
and Educational Association, literally and figuratively dealt with light and
darkness. I later found out from one of the actors, when I inquired about the
name of the theatre group, that they had been inspired to name themselves
Teatr Palmera Eldritcha after the novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,
by the American writer of science fiction and social commentary, Philip K.
Dick. This hallucinatory novel involves psychedelic drugs, virtual reality, and
the psychological violence of capitalistic power politics. The effects of these
mind-shaping elements were reflected in the theatrical performance of Jarzenie.
In the prologue, four young actors, three men and one woman,
wearing black suits and white shirts are standing, waiting, and lurking anxiously
on a semi-dark stage with the sound of droning voices in the background. One
.j>.
'-"
Jarzenie, Teatr Palmera Eldritcha, 2009 Malta International Theatre Festival, Poznari.
actor abruptly leaves and switches on powerful lights, which aggressively cover
the audience and the other actors with blinding intensity.
The actors remove their jackets and hang them on the upstage wall
and begin rhythmically moving and lip synching to a montage of contemporary
Polish pop songs. We are drawn into their world. They stop, put on their jackets,
and exit, leaving one actor center stage who says in English, "Don't say yes,"
and who describes and acts out ordinary human behavior with exaggerated
theatrical gestures. The other actors return "aglow," looking like demented
angels with fluorescent halos encircling their heads. They engage in a "hand
dance" to the accompaniment of eerie, repetitive minimalist music.
A man in a jump suit appears standing on a soapbox like an orator.
Lights blink on and off as he delivers what seems to be a political tirade. He
shouts "bon appetit" as he conducts the other actors in a quick step march
until they move mechanically in frenzied synchronized steps like automatons
in the grip of a charismatic leader. He continues exhorting the audience as he
is spotlighted, and the other performers begin dancing to his o r d s ~ riveting
theatrical demonstration of political and economic control.
The lights change, a long dark pause follows, and then the lights start
blinking on and off as three of the actors feverishly intone words about the
origins of life and human evolution. Words become gibberish as the actors'
faces are illuminated while they stand on raked steps above one another like
vertical carvings on a totem pole. Again blinding lights assault the audience and
a projected, ghostly, human shape appears, glowing and exhibiting a multitude
of twinkling stars within the outline of its body. There is a grating monotone
sound, followed by frantic, frenzied dance movement from the performers. The
movement gradually slows. The actors stop abruptly, put on their jackets and
leave the stage. This dualistic theatrical performance is defined by contrasts of
light and dark, calm and frenzied motion, independent movement and absolute
control. All these states exist within the confines of Jarzenie, making a striking
theatrical performance piece in this intimate black box space. I left the theatre
somewhat disoriented by the production. Jarzenie certainly was successful
within the confines of the theatrical space in its implicit objective to move me
out of a passive state as a viewer and heighten my awareness of the non-stop
imagery which bombards us in everyday life.
In the muddy courtyard of an abandoned slaughterhouse with a
diverse audience of viewers, Asocjacja 2006 presented the premiere of Rabin
44 Slavic and East European Peifbrmance VoL 30, No. 1
Maharal i Co/em (Rabbi Maharal and the Co/em), directed by Lech Raczak, a former
longtime member and director of the Theatre of the Eighth Day. This play
was a reinterpretation of the Golem story based on Gustave Meyrink's The
Co/em and J ewish legends of Poznan about Rabbi Judah Loewe of Prague.
1
Given the bloody history of the persecution of Jews and the torture and
killing of heretics at that time and throughout history, the old slaughterhouse
for pigs was a notable location for this production. After seeing the indoor
production of ]arzenie earlier that evening, I found that this open air space
with its historical resonances provided me with a template for examining my
emotional responses to the theatrical action that followed. The audience of
about a hundred stands on one side of the courtyard while the production
takes place in the open space between two high platforms with two large
screens above them for video projections. A cast of a dozen performers plays
out this new version of the Golem story, portraying people who should have
equal rights in society: Rabbi Maharal and his daughters, a city guard, a Catholic
monk, as well as phantoms and ghosts including the Golem, angels of love and
death, and various dybbuks, who possess the participants in the play. Video
projections throughout the performance simulate the unfolding of the Torah
and the Kabbalah as well as presentations of alchemical symbols. Very large
puppet-like automatons on wheels represent the Golem and the Pale Horse,
the production's image of the Pale Rider from the biblical book of Revelations.
In this radical reinterpretation of the Golem story, there is the
dramatic creation by the Rabbi of a Golem with a soul, whose purpose is to
carry out good in society, but who is not destroyed by his creator at the end
and instead goes out into the world as a sentient being who demands equality
with all other living creatures. The play depicts man's search for truth and the
use of knowledge to create life-a guest which puts him in conflict with God.
As we see scenes of torture and killing of Jews and other heretics by minions
of the Catholic Church on one of the platforms-a woman accused of being
a whore is drowned in a large tank and men are brutalized and hanged-the
large, sculptural, puppet-like automatons are wheeled across the playing space
and brilliantly illuminated to startling effect. A giant sculptural device which
resembles a treadmill in a hamster cage appears, and as it rotates, it moves
the bodies of the dead. When the Golem defies his destiny, proclaims his life,
and moves beyond the courtyard into the larger world, we see his enormous
shadow projected on one of the screens.
45
Rabin Maharal i Co/em, directed by Lech Raczak,
2009 Malta International Theatre Festival, Poznan

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v
This attempt to create a new myth of the Golem for contemporary
society is a very powerful and moving depiction of man's cruelty to man and the
redemptive power of the Golem. In this case, however, the Golem does not die
and become resurrected like Christ, but instead lives and takes the burdens of
mankind upon himself and asserts the dignity and equality of all people in the
world. As I witnessed this dramatic spectacle in the slaughterhouse courtyard, I
was enraptured by a contemporary theatrical ritual in which I was a participant.
For a short time, I was at one with the Golem and his struggle.
Late in the evening of June 24, I approached an abandoned soccer
stadium through a street of deserted market stalls. Here, during a light drizzle,
Teatr Usta Usta Republika (Mouth to Mouth Republic), an ensemble of young
actors, presented the collectively created premiere of Aleksandria, supervised
by Wojciech Wiriski.
The audience of about two hundred young people stood under
umbrellas in a large circle watching the performance, literally stranded at the
far edge of an urban landscape. It is a strong contextual comment that a theatre
piece about the search for a utopian land takes place in the space of a ruined
sports stadium that has been chosen by this theatre group as its performance
location. A group of homeless travelers come to Aleksandria, a mythical place
of hope- the promised land. Each person is isolated on a separate platform
and attempts to live alone: a woman with a baby, a man carrying a refrigerator,
a disheveled woman with a battered suitcase, a man with a table and chair.
They join their platforms to create a new life, a squatters' paradise. They
plant and tend a communal garden to supply themselves with food. Then
the destructive forces of society arrive. The police come and break up the
community, destroying the garden and scattering the people. This suggests the
expulsion from Eden for the violation of the law of God, eating from the tree
of knowledge. Rather than go quietly, the members of the community burn
their dwellings and possessions. There is a stand-off with the police, and then
the individuals move on. A man, a lost soul-who appears tO be the father
of the woman's child-attacks everyone and everything. He cannot find a
space on earth to live comfortably with himself and goes off to search for still
another place to be.
This piece has almost no words or dialogue, just a few lines shouted
by the "lost soul." It incorporates movement, mime, and everyday objects,
and sometimes creates striking theatrical tableaux. But the work exists on an
47
48 Slavic and East E11ropean Peiformance VoL 30, No. 1
unvarying level of dramatic energy and after a while interest wanes. There is
too much repetition of similar actions to achieve the visceral or emotional
involvement that is the stated purpose of this theatre group. Unlike the
successful use of outdoor space at the old slaughterhouse for Rabin Maharal
i Go/em, the abandoned soccer stadium chosen for Aleksandria does not fully
integrate into the theatrical performance.
Maria de Buenos Aires, a tango opera by Astor Piazzolla, translated
into Polish, directed by Malgorzata Dziewulska, was staged on the bridge over
the river in Poznan, with a full orchestra, singers, and dancers. A mostly older
audience sat on chairs in the middle of the bridge and other people crowded
around the outdoor stage set up in front of the buildings on the narrow street.
Though l only saw the last half hour, I was enthralled by the music, especially
the bandoneon player, Wieslaw and the spirited performances of
the singer/actors and dancers. The throbbing rhythms of the tango and the
sensuous singing illuminates the story of a prostitute, Maria, killed in Buenos
Aires. Seduced by the music of the bandoneon, she comes down to the streets
of the city to live her death again. With people leaning out of windows of
nearby houses on the approach to the bridge over the river in Poznan, I felt I
was on the streets of Buenos Aires while watching the opera. By staging the
opera on a bridge in Poznan, the urban location effectively became a significant
factor in the design of the performance. This theatrical space added an exciting
dimension to the opera where the audience members became an integral part
of the performance landscape.
An unusual audience participation event at the festival on June 27 is
the Guerillawalk that Austrian performance artist Oliver Hangl conducts with
audience members wearing headphones on a tour of various places in the city,
picking up low frequency radio signals with broadcast commentary and music
programmed by the tour director. About twenty people move through the
streets of Poznan, viewing and learning the history of "Hitler's castle"-now
housing the Poznari cultural center. The spectators visit a sex shop, which was
closed, and dance intimately to Michael Jackson's music in a darkened room
in an old rundown apartment building. The spectators engage with locals
looking down at us from buildings on the street. At an open air marketplace we
exchange pleasantries with the vendors. Finally, we get on a tram and arrive at
a swimming pool built by the Nazis in a former synagogue building where we
are encouraged to sing "The Amoeba," a satirical song characterized as from
49
The Time of Mothers, Theatre of the Eighth Day, Jarocin, 2009
50
Slavic and East European Pnfom;ance VoL 30, No. 1
the "biological underground," as we stand around the pool reflecting on its
disturbing history. We also watch as a child carries on a "guerilla" planting of a
flowering plant in a formal local park. The city of Poznan with its streets and
squares becomes an enormous theatrical space in which the audience interacts
with changing scenes and events. A local musician performs for the participants
on the walk. Passersby watch with delight and suspicion as the audience makes
its way through the city. The "tour" enhances my visceral sense of knowing
places in this city and is a dynamic theatrical experience. As I move through the
city, I become conscious of myself as an ensemble actor on a large urban stage.
The Gueri/lawalk provides an unusual perspective on urban scenes that we take
for granted as we rush along in our daily lives. This guided "tour" is a unique
and successful use of the varied theatrical locations presented by the city itself.
The most memorable theatrical event I witnessed was officially not
part of the festival: a performance of The Time of Mothers, created and produced
by the Theatre of the Eighth Day on the evening of June 27 in a large empty
space which at other times was a marketplace in the center of the small town
of Jarocin, outside of Poznan. This is a wordless, complex, powerfully visual
performance piece filled with intense images of struggle, suffering, and death
with continuous varied music underscoring it. According to the company,
"The present time is created by women, who are more and more noticeable,
admirable, many colored and heroic. Coming to grips with the issues of this
world they become the icon of our times."
2
The audience moves and follows
the performance as the action unfolds in various areas of the marketplace. This
is not a sophisticated urban theatre audience, but ordinary local townspeople
with their famili es, including young children, who are there to see a free outdoor
performance. Their everyday marketplace is transformed into a theatrical space
of terrifying emotional power through the actors' performance and the larger
than life projected images. An everyday location becomes an uncharted place
for the audience to have an extraordinary theatrical experience.
At the opening of the play, the mother goddess in a fearsome mask
and with a shiny golden breastplate rises on platform to a height of about
twenty-five feet. The production-which follows a cascade of images, both
live and projected--conveys the emotional attachment of women to their
sons and the bonds which are severed when they go off to war and are killed.
Women giving birth, nurturing, and watering their children like plants in huge
wheeled baby buggies that fill the stage, dressing them in clothes that have just
51
been washed, and hugging them good-bye when they leave for war are all part
of the theatrical action. Men are tortured and abused in the army and by jailers
when they are imprisoned by the enemy. Blood on a window is washed away
by clean-up workers. The rich and powerful cavort, while others die. There
are projected images of the dead and the disappeared. Finally all the members
of the ensemble frantically wash and hang up blood-soaked shirts to dry on
a large structure that rises from the ground like a dead tree. The audience of
several hundred are overwhelmed by this theatrical experience and applaud
the performers with great enthusiasm. In this theatre work, the relationship
of mothers, sons, and war takes on a palpable reality. The powerful images
remained long after witnessing the performance.
There was a striking contrast between the two pieces by past and
present members of the Theatre of the Eighth Day. The Time of Mothers (2006)
uses a wide range of theatrical movement, scenic constructions and images, but
no words. Rabin Maharal i Go/em, the recent work by former founding member
of the Theatre of the Eighth Day Lech Raczak and his ensemble, uses a mix
of visual and spoken textual and historical sources melded with enormous
sculptural puppet-like automatons and projected images. As a result, it becomes
possible to compare the theatrical development of two Polish theatre groups
sprouting from the roots of the same theatrical tree. Both approaches yield
powerful theatrical fruit.
From a small indoor theatre to the streets of a city and a market place
in a small town, the theatre presented in a wide range of spaces by the varied
performers had the power to provoke, stimulate, and entertain audiences
with the power of live performance. These performances made me strongly
aware of how important a theatrical space is to the effectiveness of a theatrical
performance and its impact on the audience. The 2009 Malta International
Theatre Festival presented a wide range of theatrical possibilities in varied
locations and audiences responded to these many events with laughter, terror,
and surprise. The issues of the larger world are encompassed in the theatre
productions that I saw in many spaces at the Festival, not in a didactic way, but
in ways that viscerally involve the audience members in the experience. At the
Malta Festival, the theatre was very much alive in Poznan and beyond.
52 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 30, No. 1
NOTES
1. According to the 2009 Malta Festival book, Loewe was born in Poznan
and served as the Rabbi of the city for a number of years in the late sixteenth century.
2. The Theatre of the Eighth D'9', )oanna Ostrowska, ed., Elzbieta Janicka, trans.
(Teatr 6smego Dnia: Poznan, nd): np.
53
PLAYWRIGHTS BEFORE THE FALL:
EASTERN EUROPEAN DRAMA IN TIMES OF REVOLUTION
STAGED READINGS AND SYMPOSIUM
Beate Hein Bennett
In popular memory, November of 2009 marks the twentieth
anniversary of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the beginning
of the dissolution of the SoYiet bloc. The fact that this process had been in
the works for some time before tends to be overlooked; from the Western
vantage point, the world saw the hammering away at the Berlin Wall on
November 9 in front of television cameras as a sudden explosion of liberation,
while to Eastern eyes, the experience culminated in a sudden implosion of
totalitarianism. As people from East and West danced on the top of The
Wall and a general drunken euphoria of freedom took hold during a night
of celebration, the quieter voices that had persistently chipped away at a wall
of silence for decades were quickly eclipsed in the immediate rush towards
the previously forbidden fruits of popular Western culture. Very quickly, a
young generation of writers emerged from the novel culture of mobile phones
and cyberspace who shared with their Western colleagues a similar youth
culture with its sense of alienation, violence, and fear lurking under a veneer
of ironic cool. The young playwrights celebrated a newfound freedom of
violent expression and fast-paced action with a dramaturgy of mixed media,
fractured characters, and disjointed juxtapositions. Above all, the language of
the young, post-1989 writers was straight-forward without any metaphorical
intentions, while the pre-1989 writers had employed metaphor as a conveyance
of existential meaning and a means of political survival.
On November 16, 2009 a new volume of plays, Plqywrights Before the
FaiL Eastern European Drama in Times qf Revolution was launched at the Martin E.
Segal Theatre Center. The book was specifically created and published by the
Segal Center as its contribution to the city-wide festival and the exhibition being
put on by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, "Performing
Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe," celebrating the twentieth
anniversary of the fall of communism in the Eastern bloc countries. The
following New York institutions also participated in the festival and supported
the publication: the Czech Center, the Hungarian Cultural Center, the Polish
lJ1
U1
Craig Bacon in Portrait by Slawornir Mro:i:ek, directed by Paul Bargetto,
Playwrights Before the Fall, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 2009
Cultural Institute, the Romanian Cultural Institute, and the Consulate General
of Slovenia.
Edited by Daniel Gerould and with a preface by Dragan Klaic,
Playtvrights Bifore the Fall presents five playwrights and five plays in English
translation. The plays are Portrait by Slawomir :Mrozek, a well known Polish
playwright living in France; Military Secret by Serbian Dusan Jovanovic living
in Slovenia; Chicken Head by Hungarian Gyorgy Spiro; Sorrow, Sorro111, Fear, the
Pit, and the Rope by Czech writer Karel Steigerwald; and Horses at the Window by
Matei Viniec, a Romanian writer and journalist living in Paris. The volume
includes brief informative introductions to the plays and the playwrights, a
selected bibliography of relevant publications dealing with the historical
background of prevailing theatre conditions in communist Eastern Europe
and the represented authors; in addition, there is a complete listing of the
festival partners and performing venues in New York that are presenting works
in various media between November 2009 and March 2010.
For the past eight years under the leadership of Dr. Frank Hentschker
and Professor Gerould, MESTC has built a significant tradition of inviting
contemporary authors from around the world and presenting professionally
prepared readings of representative plays for an audience of theatre artists,
academics, and interested "amateurs." This program has provided a forum for
discussions about contemporary dramaturgy and theatre practices around the
globe that delve also into the arena of theatre as a political tool or its survival
in a profit driven economy. The "Celebration" on November 16 was a lively
two and a half hours of theatrical "traffic" with three of the five anthologized
authors and some of the translators. Excerpts from all five plays were presented
with incomparable New York actor esprit and intelligence. The Polish award-
winning actress Elzbieta Czyzewska introduced each play reading by providing
information about its original performance circumstances. The following will
only give a glimpse into the tremendous variety of dramaturgy and diction with
which each playwright presents the one overwhelming common experience:
existence in a totalitarian system that controls all aspects of living and meaning.
Portrait by Slawornir Mrozek, translated by Jacek Laskowski, was the
first piece presented. It was directed by Paul Bargetto, Artistic Director of
East River Commedia and curator/producer of the annual undergroundzero
festival at PS 122. The audience was kept literally in the dark as the actor
standing at a lectern with one light illuminating his face from below delivered
Carmel Amit in by DusanJovanovic, directed by Ivan Talijancic,
57
58
Eleanor Ruth in Chicken Head by Gyorgy Spir6, directed by Pamela Billig,
Slavic and East European Peiformance VoL 30, No. 1
a monologue in which he seems to be addressing an absent lover who has
jilted him but whose relentless smile mocks his confession of love- that smile
which is "his salvation and his destruction." The Man wheedles, rants, cajoles,
cries, is full of the jilted lover's cliches; finally he demands "look at me" as a
huge portrait of Stalin appears in full light. It is the beginning of a play that
gradually deconstructs a character who spent his life as a political hack having
sacrificed friend, family, and ultimately himself to a corrupt system, embodied
by Stalin. The play premiered in Warsaw at the Teatr Polski in December 1987
and was performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in October 1988. Mrozek has
been widely performed in Europe and America. He left Poland for Italy in
1963 and lived in France (where he was made a citizen in 1968), Germany,
and Mexico before returning to Poland in 1990. His plays were performed in
Poland even though he lambasted totalitarianism in a covert style, often using
family life as a metaphor, as for example in his play Tango. Portrait seems a more
personal play that feels like a moral reckoning with himself and his youthful
love affair with political communism (in contrast to philosophical Marxism).
After the coup de theatre of being confronted with a larger than life size
portrait of Stalin, the next presentation was an excerpt from Dusan JovanoviC's
Military Secret, translated and directed by Ivan TalijanCic. The play premiered in
Split in 1983. Jovanovic is an inveterate theatre man who has been a leader in
experimental theatre since the 1960s, especially since his association with the
Mladinsko Theatre (Ljubljana) in 1969 of which he became the director in
1979. His many plays have appeared all over Europe, and in 1982 he received
a special Obie mention for Liberation of Skopje. Jovanovic is also an essayist,
novelist, and screenwriter, and currently teaches playwriting at the Academy of
Theatre Arts at the University in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
i ~ i l i t r y Secret takes place at the Zoolinguistic Institute, a research
facility in a Veterinary Clinic where presumablr "interspecies communication"
is studied. However, as the actors took their places, it became clear that this
was to be more of a romp in Animal House. Doctor scientists with names
like Goodman, Hitman, and Leptin observe and comment from a surveillance
room-at MESTC the light booth above the audience-a group of animal
patients, such as Rocky, the wild race horse; Blacky, a coarse stray dog; Dolly,
a sexy poodle; Dot, the nervous mangy parakeet; Stella, a bovine cow; Vito,
the randy chimpanzee; Tom, a village tomcat; Bo, a caged black bear; Goldie,
an unforgettable boar; a donkey, sheep, and goat complete the menagerie.
59
Other human characters are Lizzie, the cook-at MESTC the actress made
her a funny Texan hash slinger-who has to keep a criminal and sex driven
janitor, Frankie, at arm's length. Because the staged excerpt proceeded at a
wild farcical clip and was acted with a great deal of humor, it was difficult to
get the serious impact of the play which teeters at the edge of violence until it
erupts at the end in a chaotic massacre.
The allegorical satire of a violently dysfunctional political system and
polyglot society is a clear metaphor for Yugoslavia in 1983 when it must have
been a harbinger of the horrible violence that would rend the country apart ten
years later. What clearly emerged from the excerpt was that those who thought
they were in control and cognizant of the animals' behavior were clueless as
to what transpired among the animals, but that the animals ignored for too
long the criminality and corruption that motivated the so-called doctors and
scientists. Of course, the insane asylum and the animal farm have been used
as metaphors for criminal and totalitarian regimes by other authors, e.g.
George Orwell, Joe Orton, Tom Stoppard; however, JovanoviC's treatment is
particularly poignant at a time when demagoguery and unbridled ''iolence of
all sorts seems to drown out any rational dialogue in the interest of the survival
of the globe and all its species.
Chicken Head by the Hungarian playwright Gyorgy Spir6, in the
translation by Eugene Brogyanyi and under the direction of Pamela Billig,
artistic co-directors of the Threshold Theater Company, was presented next.
This play, written in 1985 and premiered by the Katona Theatre in 1986,
was perhaps the most realistic in tone. According to Brogyanyi, it "exposed
the socioeconomic and moral exhaustion in Hungary in the last decade of
communist rule" as "no previous play had done." Set in the courtyard of a
poor working-class neighborhood, a collection of characters who represent
various social types and generations fight and bicker among themselves like
a dysfunctional, abusive family while the building in which they live and
eventually the entire neighborhood are being condemned to be razed to the
ground. The setting and its denizens are a metaphor for the dysfunctional
country as it is falling apart. The raw language, especially of the Kid and his
Father, and the violence, which lurks in the play and finally erupts (not in the
scene presented), signal a style of writing that is surprising in a play written and
performed during communist times.
Sorrow, Sorro111, Fear, the Rope, and the Pit is an expressionist dream-play
o-
Jason Carvell in Sorrow, Sorro11J, Fear; the Rope, and the Pit by Karel Steigerwald, directed by
62
in Horses at the Window by Matei Viniec, directed by Beata Pilch,
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 30, No. 1
by Karel Steigerwald, a leading Czech playwright and political commentator
who challenged the repressive regime of the 70s and 80s with his plays, radio
dramas, television scripts, and film scenarios; he has been "labeled as the bravest
of the tolerated" writers. An excerpt of this curious play, in the translation
of Stepan S. Simek and Roger Downey, was presented under the direction of
Simek, a recipient of 2006 Pen America Translation Award and professor of
theatre at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. A short excerpt could not
do full justice to this complex play which moves through various stages of the
communist revolution during the twentieth century. Real historical characters,
such as poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadeshda, as well as places and
times mix with fictional characters and situations. Quotations of acrual poems
and passages from memoirs are adapted into the dialogue. Characters are dead
and alive at the same time. The author asks us to simply believe in this melange
because, in his words, "we arc lying in a coma, and at random the monsters of
olden days creep into our dreams and demand their due. They are all cadavers.
If we only could wake up." The confrontation is ultimately between the
opportunist and the rebel, and all those who were ground up by the regime;
it is a profoundly pessimistic play, even as the last scene unfolds in 1989 in
front of the German Embassy in Prague on the eve of the Velvet Revolution.
Written between 1989 and 1990, the play premiered in Prague in the spring of
1991 under the direction of renowned Czech director Jan Grossman; it was
apparently ill received by a public in the first flush of liberation because of its
disillusion about any hope for honest dealings with the past.
The final presentation of the evening was the opening scene between
Mother and Son of a highly poetic and metaphorical play, Horses at the Window
by Romanian writer Matei i ~ n i e c in the translation by Alison Sinclair, who
has worked for several years in Romania. Under the direction of Beata Pilch,
who also played the Mother with great zest, the play's underlying absurd humor
dominated over its inherent poetic quality, perhaps even surprising the author
by the quality of madcap farce which overtook the presentation. The whole
play with a cast of characters called Mother, Father, Son, Wife, Daughter, and
The Messenger can be performed by two actors, according to the author. The
spare dramaturgy relies on repetition of motifs while the central plot is that
of a man going off to war, only to be killed. The Messenger (Death) bearing
the same name "Hans" as the soldiers (Son, Father, Husband) visits the family
each time to deliver the news of the un-heroic death of the man of whom no
63
body is left "because all that's left is on the soles of the boots of those that
trampled him." The play was supposed to open in Bucharest in 1987 but one
day before the opening i ~ n i e c escaped to Paris; consequently, the opening was
canceled, and he became officially a traitor to the country. The play received
its premiere in Lyon, France in 1992 and was finally presented in Romania
after the fall of communism. In the discussion following the readings, i ~ n i e c
spoke about the black humor, the "sad laughter," with which young writers of
his generation tried to deconstruct the predominant language of ideology that
destroys the human being with "big ideas and big words." Common big words
became totally corrupted by the regime's manipulative usage-words, such as
country, family, work.
A lively discussion, moderated by Gerould, with the participation of
the playwrights Jovanovic, Spiro, and i ~ n i e c as well as some of the translators
and directors and, of course, the audience, concluded the evening. Several
common denominators among the plays emerged in the course of the evening:
the use of metaphor to cloak the implicit critique; ironic language to unmask
the abuse of language; the loss of human value through violence. There was
agreement that these plays continue to resonate twenty years later because
political systems-whether communist or capitalist- manipulate and trap
human beings. Simek observed that "evil still exists and people still flee." He
explained that his students and audience at Lewis and Clark College in Portland
fully understood Steigerwald's play as an "oratorio of the dead." Jovanmic
experienced his "fears and presumptions turning into bloody reality which was
the end of hopes for a transition from totalitarianism to democracy." Spiro
intended to depict all the "dysfunctions of love, work, family." The audience
inquired about the impact on theatre under the new political systems. The
writers agreed that present economic conditions are harsh for theatre and that
liberal democracy makes it more difficult to identify and resist the manipulators.
As Jovanovic observed, "democracy has many faces and to write political plays
is to be an optimist that things will get better," therefore he has stopped writing
political drama and turned to writing columns. Steigerwald meanwhile persists
in writing plays despite public dislike because he wants to write "mirrors that
present the audiences with their monstrous faces." No going quietly into this
good night!
64
Slavic and East European Peiformance Vol. 30, No. 1
TADEUSZ SLOBODZIANEK'S OUR CLASS:
CLOSER EVEN THAN OUR TOWN
Joshua Abrams and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
Set in a small Polish town, Our Class follows a group of ten school
classmates over eighty years of change. Through their childhood games, crushes,
and innocent taunting, their coming of age in the Soviet occupation of their
town, and their increasingly divided adult interactions, the play foregrounds the
tragic interrelationships that bind these lives and deaths in the face of history.
The play, by Tadeusz Slobodzianek, has been given a straightforward and clean
translation into English by playwright Ryan Craig (who is best known for What
We Did to Weinstein and the Holocaust play The Class Room). Bijan Sheibani's
direction of the production, which ran from September 16 to January 12 at the
British National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre, is strong throughout, leaving the
focus on the story and the acting by the cast of ten.
Appropriately, the play begins in a classroom in the 1920s, where
each of the characters is entering school. They sit scattered in school chairs
around the stage, introduce themselves, mention their father's occupation, and
say what they want to be when they grow up-predictions that we learn over
the course of the play are altered, in almost all cases, by the politics of history.
The class is noticeably an integrated class of Jews and Christians, a fact that
will become increasingly important as the years move on. While all are sitting
together at first, the Jewish students are soon relegated to the back of the class
as the Christians engage in prayer; within this early scene the stage is set for
the complexity of relationships-religious, political, and sexual- among these
young students. As the first act moves through the turmoil of the 20s and 30s
into the destruction of W\X'II, the students develop from these children into
who they will become-the bully, the follower, the intellect, the martyr, the
savior, the flirt-but these archetypes are imbued with nuance aided by the
deft choices made by each of the actors as they age physically through gesture
and facial expression.
Staged in the round at the National Theatre, in a simple design by
Bunny Christie, the oblong stage is surrounded by a foot-high silver metal
bench/frame with a blue neon lip. This frame is mirrored by another hung
high above the stage (which seemed as if it must obscure the views of those
65
in the second circle) and which lowers ominously at the clima." of the first act.
The usefulness and impact of the upper frame, however, was extremely limited
and it seems an overly expensive effect for little effectiveness. The school
chairs-simple straight-backed wooden chairs-are moved to the lengthwise
ends of the stage, outside the stage frame, five on each side, and remain empty
until actors occupy them once their characters die. The first of these deaths is
the most horrific and represents the turning political tide when these life-long
friends and classmates are swept up in irrational religious hatred that sweeps
throughout the town.
The first act knits the characters' lives together, from playmates
unbothered by their differences, to forced intimacy that blind hatred fosters,
to life-long guilt and agony over causing the death of another. The play is
about this town, the people who inhabit it, and about histories. Our Class is
even more tightly knit than the denizens of Our Town who also notably inhabit
a graveyard of chairs. The characters are always ghosted by their histories: the
Jewish child, Abram Piekarz, later Abram Baker (played by Justin Salinger) is a
narrator of sorts, leaving long before the war for America and surviving into
the twenty-first century; he sits on the edge of the stage frame throughout.
Darker ghostings appear in the forms of the murder victims, who step out
of their chairs to appear to their classmates, rarely diegetically, but pointedly
making the audience aware of their haunting presence in scenes such as the
wedding of two classmates-the Christian peasant Wladek (Michael Gould)
and the Christian-convert Marianna, formerly Rachelka, the bright Jewish
daughter of the town mill owner (Amanda Hale) who managed to hide and
save herself but none of her family.
The upper frame of the set, as mentioned earlier, lowers only once, a
symbolic gesture that cannot match the horror of watching classmates turn on
each other as precursor to the town's turning on its Jews, marching them to a
barn in the center of town, locking it and lighting it on fire. As the frame lifts
for the second act we are left with a large pile of ash-representing the barn
and its inhabitants-that the characters in the second act must continuously
negotiate. As the second act progresses, those who remain alive are gradually
covered in this ash, a literal reminder of the deed as well as their inability to
ever rid themselves of the memories and horrors of classmates and former
neighbors trapped in the barn.
The play is based on Slobodzianek's study and creative license
0\
-._)
Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Our Class, directed by Bijan Sheibani, Cottesloe Theatre, London, 2009
surrounding a pogrom that took place in the small Polish town of Jedwabne in
the early days of the Second World War. While the early reports (in the years
after the war) pinned these atrocities on Nazi occupiers, historians have come
to suggest that the truth is perhaps far more horrific as neighbor turned on
neighbor with an incredible amount of violence. The events are perhaps best
described in a quotation from an eyewitness to (and victim of) the actual event:
"The Poles selected dozens of young Jewish men and ordered them to carry
Lenin's statue over to a Jewish cemetery .... After that they murdered all the
men and threw their bodies into the same pit. The rest of the Jews were kept
in place at the town square all day under a scorching sun and without a drop
of water .... They tortured the rabbi, Avigdor Bialystocki, and did not spare
the women and the children."
1
The description of those events becomes the
centerpiece of the play (which has to date not been produced in Poland).
By showing us these events through the eyes of a tightly knit class-
"Your classmate is like your family. Maybe even more important than that,"
Zygmunt disturbingly suggests---Slobodzianek shows us how easily and
quickly our lives can change.
2
In contrast to Our Town, where the slight hints
of conflict--ethnic and alcohol-related-are hidden below the surface, this
town's every day comings and goings are shattered by these conflicts bubbling
to the surface. In the years before the war, one of the Jewish characters,
Menachem, gets in with the Communist party and opens a cinema (although
he's limited in the ftlms that they make available to him). Perhaps the most
adaptable character, he spends the war hiding out in a classmate's barn, reduced
from privilege to nothing by the turns of history, but then is able to recapture
some of this privilege by becoming an elite member of the secret police in the
years after the war.
The Jedwabne pogrom itself becomes a schoolyard game in this
production, only with frightening consequences; childhood jealousies and
relationships provide a horrific background to the gang rape of the Jewish
character Dora. The children's games, nursery rhymes, and songs that serve
as a continual leitmotif within the play (more frequently at the beginning and
continually less so throughout, but there until the end) are a poignant reminder
of this class's common history now rewritten as conflict.
Although largely unmarked early in the play, religion is a focus
throughout as it moves in and out of the characters' lives. Two of the characters,
both of whom survive most of the play, become members of the clergy-
o-
'Cl
The company circling Sinead Matthews as Dora,
Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Our Class, directed by Bijan Sheibani, Cottesloe Theatre, London, 2009
Abram Baker becomes a rabbi in America (presumably based on the real-life
story of Jacob Baker) and the character Heniek (played by Jason Watkins)
becomes a Catholic priest, who eventually comes back to head up the church
in town. Heniek's religion is present throughout the play, but he is portrayed
as a character of dubious morals, who watched most of the events during
the war, participating slightly, and condoning implicitly. Baker acts as a link
to a more innocent time when these classmates were all friends, representing
hope for those left standing on shifting religious grounds. Through Baker,
S!obodzianek enumerates the Jewish past and present in his listing of names:
the first time, as Baker mourns the many he left behind, and later, expressing
hope and futurity through the sheer number of his descendants.
We also witness how friendships and loyalties shift through the violent
murder of classmate and intellectual Jakub Kac, beaten to death in the town
square taking the blame for his Catholic classmate Zygmunt's own betrayal
of Rysiek, another non-Jewish classmate. (This is based on an actual event,
described in Jan Gross's 2001 Neighbors: The Destruction of the jeJJJish Community
in Jedwabne, Poland, except the historical Jakub Kac was a seventy-three year
old, not the classmate of his attackers.) Yet we also witness how friendships
provide ties that bind through the marriage of Wladek to Rachelka, or the
loyalty that prompts character Zocha (Tamzin Griffm) to take Menachem into
her barn during the pogrom, hiding him from her family and providing him
with food, but this loyalty only extends as far as saving his life-when he asks
her to help his wife Dora (Sinead Matthews) and their baby, she cannot.
The cast of ten convincingly move their characters from childhood to
old age without the aid of costume and makeup; the actors don't indicate their
ages (except perhaps for a brief moment as we adjust to adults playing children
as the play opens), but embody subtle gestures, energy shifts, and physicalities
that bring the audience into their lives to share their rage, sadness, or confusion
as the three-hour long play moves into almost the present day, tracing the lives
of these classmates until the death of each one. The complexity of history
emerges through the bodies of these actors: those cut down in their prime like
Jakub Kac, leave the stage with the physicality of youth or defiance; the child-
like flirtations of Dora extend into her death, when she is finally reunited with
her childhood sweetheart and rapist Rysiek. In one of the most painful, and
troublingly non-feminist, scenes, Matthews as Dora reveals this crush as she
narrates her own rape, making the horrific realization that she is finally fmding
70 Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 30, No. 1
--J
.....
Amanda Hale as Rachelka/Marianna, Sinead Matthews as Dora, and Lee Ingleby as Zygmunt,
Tadeusz Slobodzianck's Our Class, directed by Bijan Sheibani, Cottesloe Theatre, London, 2009
Amanda Hale as Rachelka/1\farianna, Tamzin Griffm as Zocha in background,
Tadeusz Slobodzianek's 011r Class, directed by Bijan Sheibani, Cottesloe Theatre, London, 2009
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pleasure with this man whom she has loved for so long from afar. In an equally
complex turn, Hale's Rachelka must find a way to survive as the only Jew left
alive in town; although her hesitant body slowly walks down the aisle to marry
her "savior" \X'ladek, the actor's eyes somehow turn to stone and remain so
for the duration of the play. She dies inwardly at this point, while her physical
death is one of the last in the evening.
The actors make us believe in their strength, their confusion, and
their complex histories. Although we detest Zygmunt and his followers, their
ignorant and youthful loyalty to what they do not really understand is made
clear. The actors make us understand who these characters are enough to hate
them, and to recognize that hatred in ourselves. The production relies on its
actors to take us on this journey, to make us rethink how histories are told, and
to recollect our own histories. They succeed in this, reminding us of the power
of individuals and the ways in which we are all connected. The simple lessons
of Grover's Corners are brought home in particularly violent and emotionally
embodied ways here in Slobodzianek's Jedwabne; the differences and distances
between small towns across the world seem to disappear.
NOTES
1. "We Remember Jewish Jedwabne," http:/ / www.zchor.org/jedwabne/
jeindex.htm, visited October 5, 2009.
2. Tadeusz Slobodzianek, Our Class (London: Oberon Books, 2009), 55.
73
Portrait of Bruno Jasieriski, by Tytus Czyzewski, c. 1920
74
Slavic and East European Performance VoL 30, No. 1
BRUNO JASIENSKI'S MANNEQUINS' BALL
AND FUTURIST PERFORMANCE:
WOODEN LEGS HIT THE FLOOR
SaschaJust
Polish poet and playwright Bruno Jasieriski is the inspiration, the
motor for the evening of Polish Futurist theatre, poetry, manifestoes, and art
presented by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center,
on November 9, 2009. Commemorating Jasieriski's work, the event-part of
the prestigious Performa 09 biennial-is a dedication to resistance, because
within the short span of his life Jasieriski, enfant terrible, emigre artist between
Warsaw, Paris, and Moscow, the last of the Futurists, had managed to offend
all dominant political ideologies of his time. In 1938, at the age of only thirty-
seven, Jasieriski, was charged by Stalin authorities with deviation from party
doctrine and was executed in Moscow, where he had fled from persecution
in Western Europe. Now, through a monocle he stares back at us visitors: a
serious young man, holding a book with an engraved heart, shaded by a plant
thinner than him-if that is possible-as the Polish Futurist Tytus Czyzewski
painted Jasieriski in 1920 and as reprinted on the program booklet.
The birch-colored walls of the Elebash Recital Hall, where the event
took place, are lined with mannequins clad in fanciful dresses, greeting the
spectators in frozen poses. As they begin to move ever so slightly-coming to
life, it seems-they lead into British director Allison Troup-Jensen's staging of
Jasieriski's play Mannequins' Ball, a rare treat. Written in 1931 and first staged
in 1933 in Prague at E. F. Burian's Theatre D34, Mannequins' Ball had been
produced at the Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw in 197 4 and taken on tour by
the Ateneum Ensemble through West Germany and the Soviet Union for the
next couple of years. It is currently being staged in Gdansk at Teatr Wybrzeze,
in a production directed by Ryszard Major that opened on February 19,2010.
In the interim years, the play had remained mostly in obscurity, and sadly
so. It is an ingenious piece of dramatic work, a mechanical fairytale, in the
spirit of the Futurists' love for technology's apparently limitless possibilities,
satirizing decadent capitalist societies. In keeping with Futurist infatuation
with technology, animated graphics are projected on a large screen at the back
of the stage, but, as it turns out, the cast is so engaging that the production
75
Christopher Domig and Kersti Bryant
in Mannequins' Bailby Bruno Jasienski, directed by Allison Troup-Jensen
Christopher Domig, Kersti Bryan, Paten Hughes,
Stuart Luth, Jared Houseman, and Alicia Blasingame in Mannequins' Ba/J
does not really need this digital feature. As presented on the largely empty
stage, the first act takes place in a French fashion house, where once a year
the mannequins come to life and throw a ball. They chat, click their heels,
and dance with the verve of those who are acutely aware that the pleasure of
feeling alive is a fleeting one. Allison Troup-Jensen directs the actors to perform
with exuberance, yet always to maintain remnants of Pinocchio-like stiffness
in their movements, reminding us and them that those are wooden legs hitting
the floor. The mannequins who, above all else, desire to shake the confines of
their rigid existence are interrupted by a man of living flesh and blood. The
disturbance quickly spirals into chaos. A hastily arranged trial culminates in a
gigantic pair of red scissors closing down on the poor man's neck. Two young
anarchists, styled with hip shades, jump on stage belting out a manifesto. What
at first appears like an attempt to rescue the man from the scissors is revealed
to be a Futurist intervention, disrupting the show and cutting the performance
at the end of the first act.
77
78
William Austin Tidwell, as a manifesto-declaiming Futurist,
"interrupting" Mannequins' Bailby Bruno Jasienski
Slavic and East European Peifor711ance VoL 30, No. 1
Excerpt from Joanna Warsza's fJ.lm showing performance artist Massimo Furlan
recreating Polish soccer star Zbigniew Boniek's 1982 World Cup win without a ball
The next spectacle compensates the audience for the unresolved
cliffhanger. Joanna Warsza shows a fUm about the reconstruction of one of
the most significant soccer matches in Polish history, the 1982 World Cup
second round win against Belgium. On a soccer field one player, and one
player only-the performance artist Massimo Furlan-supported by at most
twenty spectators and a radio announcer, re-plays the entire game as the Polish
star Zbigniew Boniek without a ball. This fascinating pantomime recreation
of Bon.iek's original steps and kicks creates such excitement that the Elebash
audience, whipped into a frenzy by the broadcast announcer, together with the
audience on the field cheers on Massimo Furlan. It seems ironic that a radio
recording, a technical device that was once considered futuristic, but now is
rather dated, has such a profound effect on a contemporary audience. When
Furlan strikes the final goal, bringing Poland to victory, the Elebash spectators
applaud noisily, mesmerized that this artificial restaging of a live event manages
to break the digital screen and attain an entirely new quality of "liveness."
79
Joanna Warsza,
Theatre Curator and Director of the Laura Palmer Foundation, Warsaw
The evening closes with a multimedia presentation by famed New
York based Polish fluxus artist K.rzysztof Zarebski. Again, as in Mannequins'
Ball, a video projection is juxtaposed with an onstage performance, showing
Marek Bartelik, Professor of art history at The Cooper Union School of
Art, lecture about Zarebski. As the camera foUows Bartelik through the haUs
of Cooper Union, using only available lighting and, as it seems, the camera
microphone, the documentation copies the popular formula of a "behind
the scenes" video, and so, with its artificiality, sets an ironic background for
the onstage performance. Zarebski is dressed in a suit vaguely reminiscent
of Woody AUen's squash-like outfit in his famous 1970s movie Sleepers. Of
Zarebski's many obscure actions on stage the most memorable is his reluctant
fight with an enormous phaUus made of bubble wrap. A true intervention, as
he caUed his piece, this is confounding and possibly suggests the notion that
fluxus is the legitimate heir to the Futurist movement. After aU, the Futurists
were famous for disrupting expectations and throwing conventions overboard.
So, too, does Zarebski, leaving the audience puzzled about what they had
experienced and chaUenged to think about the ties between a Futurist past and
the present time.
80 Slavic and East European Perjor!llance VoL 30, No. 1
'
Krzysztof Zarebski and Marek Bartelik
in a Futurist performance for the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
ZIFT
OR THE NEW FACE OF BULGARIAN CINEMA
Vessela Warner
Despite financial difficulties and serious reductions in production in
the last twenty years
1
, post-communist Bulgarian cinema has managed to address
critically the grave aftermath of totalitarian maladies: family disintegration,
social hypocrisy, moral anxiety, historical lies, political crimes, and deep human
atrophy. New themes also include national identity (especially the situation of
ethnic minorities), the "drabness" of contemporary life, and the existential
crisis of a lost generation living on the periphery of the globalized world.
2
Adjustment to new political, social, and cultural environment altered the
movies' content, but did not provide new cinematic language and entertainment
values. The "chronic" state of being socially but not aesthetically/emotionally
engaging made Bulgarian films hardly visible on the world stage.
The international success of Zift (directed by Javor Gardev, 2008)
brought understandable excitement to local cultural life and hope for a long
awaited breakthrough of Bulgarian cinema abroad. The f.tlm won the Silver
George award for directing at the thirtieth Moscow Film Festival, the Special
Jury Award at the Sofia International Film Festival 2009, and was selected for
the 2008 Toronto Film Festival (Discovery section).
3
Recognition was given to
Vladislav Todorov's original script-a mixture of noir and sots-art-entrusted
to avant-garde theatre directOr Javor Gardev.
4
Zift attracted sizeable local
audiences and media attention and was met with critical scrutiny and mixed
reviews. Confronting contrasting opinions-viewers either loved or hated it-
the creators declared that they conceived the movie as a "challenge" and an
"argument within the debate about the Bulgarian cinema today."
5
The plot of Zift is typical of a mystery thriller: young convict Moth is
freed after serving a twenty-year sentence for the murder of a jeweler, a murder
he did not commit. Leaving prison with the dream of moving away from his
tumultuous past, Moth is forcefully reunited with his accomplices-his former
lover Ada and the actual murderer Slug-who have adapted to the new social
standards of life under communist totalitarianism, but have not abandoned
their search for the black diamond that mysteriously disappeared on the night
of the crime. As the keeper of the diamond's secret, Moth quickly becomes
82 Slavic and East European Perjor111ance VoL 30, No. 1
Moth (Zakhari Bakharov)
escorted by Sergeant Major (rsvetan Dimitrov) and Private (Dimo Alexiev)
in Zift, directed by Javor Gardev, 2008
the object of a wild chase, physical torture, exotic poisoning, seduction, and
intrigues.
The frantic night of persecution and retaliation set in the 1960s capital
of Bulgaria ends up with a classical "showdown" among the three thugs at
the jeweler's grave where Moth claims the diamond is to be found. By then,
Moth has becomes certain of Ada's betrayal. At the end, Slug is slaughtered by
Moth, Ada runs away after hitting her ex-lover with a shovel, and the poisoned
Moth counts down the last minutes of his life in a gravediggers' shack. The
ex-con bites off a piece from the large ball of asphalt gum (a substance
known as "zift") which he has carried along all these years, picks out the black
diamond hidden inside, and slowly swallows it. Most of the images, discursive
"interludes," and overall atmosphere of the movie, are tropes of the f.tlm's title.
"Zift" is an Arabic word for black natural resin or asphalt, also used as chewing
gum. The second, more colloquial, meaning of the word is "solid body-waste."
Metaphorically put, Zift is a story about obscure Moth who descends into the
cloacae of human existence while defiantly and self-indulgently "chewing" on
his dismal fate.
The story evolves as a twisted fantasy of the protagonist-narrator
Lev Kaludov Zheljazkov. His nickname, Moth, connotes a character without
83
qualities or power, who follows an arbitrary and erratic path. Moth is based on
two noir stereotypes: the hard-boiled detective, investigating, engaging in, and
reflecting on the action, and the wrongly accused man whose sentimentality
and naivete gets him involved in the crime. Either way, Moth behaves like a
typical social outcast-alienated from the rest of the society since childhood,
having toughened his body and soul within the brutal capsule of prison, and
somewhat passively, almost sacrificially, accepting the trials of his doomed
life. The duality of characterization, typical of noir and its parent genre
Expressionism, is embodied by the skin-headed, big-eyed Moth (Zachary
Baharov), whose large masculine body is also incredibly nimble and relaxed.
The elusive and sensual Ada (Tanya Ilieva) is the distinctive femme fatale, who
changes several masks throughout the story: a seductive schoolgirl, unfaithful
lover, nightclub singer, and a murderer. She is symbolized by the "praying"
mantis, which Moth gives her as a gift at the beginning of their courtship.
The warning given by the freakish mantis-seller proves true at the end of the
movie: the female of this predatory insect is known to devour her partner
during mating.
The synergy between noir and socialist cliche gives rise to a gallery
of secondary characters: the archetypal villain Slug (Vladimir Penev), later
reincarnated as a ruthless communist technocrat \v:ith a military decoration, the
neurotic and sensually ominous Doctor (Snezhina Petrova), and the one-eyed
inmate Van Wurst the Eye (Mihail Mutafov), a philosophizing non-conformist
and Moth's confidant. Discrepancies in the acting styles-from the eccentric
and grotesque Doctor, through the monochromic and stereotypical Slug and
Van Wurst, to the inexpressive, "nco-realistic" Moth and disturbingly vague
Ada-have unfortunately damaged the aesthetic integrity of the ftlm. Even
more incongruent are the overdramatic Priest (Djoko Rossich), the three
"stooges"-storytellers in the clinic's waiting room-and the folkloric-farcical
drunk in the tavern (Ivan Barnev). An examination of the film's structure
could well determine if these incompatible actor's choices have a deliberate,
deconstructive function.
In the conventions of film noir, Zift presents a world of decay and
deceit, wrapped in the cellophane of popular culture and decadently rendered in
black-and-white. The 1960s setting promises surprising schemes of suspense,
since the era is rife with examples of omnipresent military control, state
corruption, and citizens' informing. Surprisingly, not many creative discoveries
84
Slavic and East European Performance Vol. 30, No. 1
00

Moth (Zakhari Bakharov) and Ada (fanya Ilieva)
86
Van Wurst the Eye (Mihail Mutafov)
in Zifl, directed by Javor Gardev, 2008
Slavic and East European Peiformance ~ J L 30, No. 1
of the "socialist noir'' are made in the movie and only a few vintage images
call up the atmosphere of decay, terror, and absurdity. The most expressive
are the scenes at the prison: the aesthetically "poor" spaces of the cell, the
dining hall and the boxing ring, "colored" by shadows and light. They serve as
a neutral canvas for nonsensical communist slogans,
6
amorphous crowds, and
close-ups of morbid faces. Particularly thrilling is the scene of a boxing match
during which Van Wurst has his prosthetic eye knocked out of its socket to
the deafening "drum roll" of the ecstatic audience. Besides its non-realistic
rhythm, the scene celebrates the cinematographic achievements of noir. the
"low-key lighting, chiaroscuro effects, deep focus photography, extreme camera
angles and expressionist distortion."
7
Only one other use of space reaches the
aesthetic height of the boxing scene; the city's administrative quarter with its
Stalinist-type architecture is shown as a nightmarish maze in Moth's troubled
perception. Other resourceful topoi-the women's bathhouse, the nightclub,
the scene of the crime, and the graveyard-fail to build an impressive vision.
The frantic chase through the women's bathhouse following Moth's break-
out from the torture chamber is a scene that should have resonated with noir's
expressionistic types as well as with one leading leitmotif in Zift: the diabolical
nature of women. Yet, the nude bodies surrounding and hindering Moth are
cautiously naturalistic rather than stylized and suggestive of women's diabolical
sexual nature. The lovers' reunion and Ada's last, exasperated act of sexual
"manslaughter" happens at the scene of the crime, where the chalk-outline of
the jeweler's dead body is still intact. This well-scripted scene of mystery and
symbolism is directed ineffectively and acted non-dramatically, as a result of
which it fails to drive the action to a thrilling finale.
Shortly after the scene of Moth's escape from the bathhouse, the
camera shots get longer, the stylized composition gives way to graphic or
realistic images, and the tempo is slowed down by tiresome monologues and
comically repulsive, as well as culturally specific, situations from Bulgarian daily
life. Halfway through its plot, Zifi seems to abandon the aesthetic charm of noir
and sots-art travesties, and embraces the racy and offensive "neo-realism" that
came to represent the metastasis of communism. The director confirms such
an opinion with his statement that, "the movie only pretends to be an allegory
of male/female relationship and the communist past, while in fact is being
an allegory of contemporary Bulgaria."
8
Following this clue, a viewer might
interpret Moth's coming out of prison as a metaphor of Bulgaria's transition
87
from dictatorship into a traumatic state where freedom and democracy are
replaced by lawlessness and moral degradation.
While the captivating vision of Sofia's underworld gives way to cliches
of somber post-communist reality, the poorly edited episodes struggle tO
sustain the main plotline-the pursuit of the black diamond. Ultimately, the
enchanting world of crime disintegrates into an eclectic mosaic of present-
day trivia, cult images, and folklore. The focus of the plot moves to popular
songs, dirty jokes, and anecdotal horror stories. Thus, the initially established
mode of film noir dissipates and reveals its "hidden" ingredients: a pulp culture
of adventure and brutality. The new cinematic vision evokes some analogies
with Cohen brothers' "carnival" of violence, as well as Tarantino's extreme
and witty thrillers. Zijfs erratic stylistic behavior invites the viewer to look
for possible postmodern techniques in the fUm's revolving composition, self-
referentiality, and intertextuality.
Zifi possesses a complex circular composition, additionally enhanced
by succinct, poetic language. The opening monologue in the ftlm belongs to the
gravedigger who appears in the last scene. His nauseating story about the feces-
tanker driver's revenge introduces and closes the heavy scatological discourse
in the movie. "The beginning starts with the end," Moth philosophically
concludes when he is knocked down by a guard on his way out of prison. The
phrase implies other paradoxical reversals of situations: for Moth, freedom
becomes an "imprisonment," repentance for his crime is paid by new crimes,
and the past becomes a future. The end of the mystery is non-sensational and
ironic, as if attuned to the bleak perspective on social, moral, and existential
values. Moth swallows the black diamond and, curled up in the fetal position,
uneventfully and arbitrarily ends his life and the story he narrates. This is also
an ambiguous denouement. The viewer is tricked into imagining that, if he
can survive poisoning, Moth will go back to prison (ie. the "beginning" of the
story) for the murder of Slug.
Several intriguing objects in Moth's prison cell, slowly tracked
by the camera in the opening scene, serve as semiotic clues to the film's
subtext. These objects are a dictionary of contemporary Bulgarian language,
a volume of Voltaire's Candide, Maxim Gorky's famous line from The Lower
Depths-"Man! It has a proud ring!" (translated in the film's English subtitles
as, "Man, that sounds dignified'')-tattooed on Moth's back, and a postcard
with Oscar Kokoschka's poster for his Expressionist play Murderer the Women:r
Doctor (Snezhina Tankovska) and Moth (Zakhari Bakharov)
Hope. This eclectic "code," left by the scriptwriter, gives rise to an intellectual
"game" involving language, literature, ideology, and philosophy. The writer is
experimenting with different narrative techniques: political cliche, moralizing,
Expressionism, and various media.
VladislavTodorov's black novel of the same title is said to have served
as the basis of the fil.m.
9
Nevertheless, Todorov maintains that his creative
method consisted of simultaneously writing the novel and the script.
10
The
fusion of narrative and cinematic techniques are apparent in both works, but
they pose more challenges to the film's language. The postmodern text is dense
and enjoyable in Vladislav Todorov's novel, where cultural signs, borrowed
speeches, semiotic riddles, and poetic syntaxes abound, as do bullets and blood
in Tarantino's movies. The novel itself functions as stream-of-"cultural"-
consciousness, mixing Todorov's childhood memories of communist Sofia
with his intellectual background as a scholar, journalist, critic, and writer
whose career has been split between Bulgarian and American culturesn In
the novel, Vladislav Todorov lays claim to a discursive space where various
literary and philosophical influences intertwine, overlap, or collide: Michel
Foucault's Discipline and Punish, George Bataille's Story of the Eye, Albert Camus'
The Stranger, as well as James Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Dostoyevsky.
89
The movie falls short in emphasizing the deconstructive function
of the highlighted quotes. Moth's narration carries most of the intellectual
self-irony and postrnodern poetics of the script, but it stands at odds with
the indecisive cinematographic approach that fluctuates between explanatory
realism, out-and-out noir, and banal black comedy. Exemplary of such inept
intertextuality is the "quoted" scene from the Hollywood classic Gilda (1946).
In Zift, Ada is a performer in a night club under the artistic nickname Gilda,
singing a song about woman's unfaithfulness. In a black silk dress and comical
hairdo that attempts to conjure up the iconic femme fatale played by Rita
Hayworth, Ada gives a flat, indifferent performance which neither parodies
nor re-envisions the original. The irony of a postrnodern "simulation" of
reality does not seem intentionally pursued by the director and his actors, with
the result that the viewer is invited to follow only the criminal plot and not the
performative aspects of its presentation.
12
Despite its aesthetic shortcomings as a work of entertainment, Zift
is an ambitious project that marks "the beginning of a beautiful friendship"
between two strong creative minds, Vladislav Todorov and Javor Gardev. Their
desire to forge a new stylistic realm is admirable and the success of their debut
has been stimulating. Currently, Todorov and Gardev are contemplating anoth-
er film project that employs creative memories of the political past. Let's hope
that this time they find a clear film language that can be effectively interpreted
by actors and fully understood by audiences.
NOTES
1. As Dina Iordanova attests, there were about sixty films produced between
1990 and 2005. Most of them were privately subsidized in contrast to the fully state-
supported film industry in communist Bulgaria. Dina Iordanova, Ne11J Bulgarian Cinema,
(Scotland: College Gate Press, 2008), 8.
2. See lordanova's surveys of contemporary Bulgarian cinema in 1Vew
Bulgarian Cinema and "Bulgaria: Timid Provincialism and Isolation," Small National
Cinemas, D. Petrie and M. Hjort (eds.) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
3. Other international awards include Zachary Baharov's Leading Actor's
Award at the Seoul Film Festival2009 and Best Director award for Javor Gardev at the
Vilnius International Festival 2009.
4. Zift is Gardev's debut as a film director. In his decade-long career as theatre
director he has won various national awards.
5. Denitza Asenova, Interview with Vladislav Todorov, June 25, 2009,
Politika, http:/ /www.politika.bg/article?id=13316
6. Ranging from empty formulas to illogical maxims, such signs were symbols
of the inflated language and mediocre leadership of the totalitarian communist state.
The viewer's eye could see a couple of them on the prison walls: the folkloric "No
work, no food" and the inept motto "On your feet, toiling hands!"
7. Lee Horsely, "The Development of Post-war Literary and Cinematic
Noir," 2002. http:/ /www.crimeculrure.com/Contents/Film%20Noir.html
8. Javor Gardev, "Zift in Bulgarian Context" (SXSW festival, 2009).
September 25, 2009. http:/ /wwwmovingpicruresmagazine.com/Personalities/
tabid/58/entryid/1763/Zift-in-Bulgarian-Context.aspx
9. Vladislav Todorov, Zift (Sofia: Janet 45, 2006).
10. "Special Fearures," Zift, Miramar Film, DVD, 2009.
11. Todorov received Doctorate degrees from the Bulgarian Academy of
Science and the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1996, he has been teaching culrural
history of Russia and Eastern Europe at the University of Pennsylvania.
12. An interesting yet hardly intentional example of self-referentiality is seen
in the tavern scene, where for a couple of seconds the camera focuses on a man with
thick glasses and barrette. He appears to be the tavern owner, who does not participate
in the group's singing but is occupied in writing something in a notebook. The actor in
this cameo is screenwriter Vladislav Todorov.
91
CONTRIBUTORS
JOSHUA ABRAMS is Assistant Editor for PAJ: A journal of Performance
and Art and Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at
Roehampton University. His publications have appeared in Theatre journal, TDR,
and PA}, among other places. He is Vice President for ATHE Conference
2011 and is completing a book-length manuscript on notions of Levinasian
ethics in relation to performance.
BEATE HEIN BENNETT received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from
the University of South Carolina. She was born and raised in Germany and
currently resides in New York City. Besides having taught theatre and literature
courses, she is a freelance dramaturg and translator who has worked with the
Living Theatre, the Open Theatre, the Third Step Theatre, and the Theater
Werkhaus Moosach (Germany). She is a frequent contributor to SEEP.
KRYSTYNA LIPINSKA ILLAKOWICZ is a Senior Lecturer in Polish at Yale
University. She hold her M.A. from Warsaw University and her Ph.D. from
New York University in Comparative Literature. Her research interests include
Bruno Schultz, Polish female writers, \X'itkacy, and Witold Gombrowicz. She is
a frequent contributor to SEEP.
SASCHA JUST has published in Theater Heute, Western European Stages, Text &
Presentation, and Kino/earate. She is a fJlm artist whose work has been seen at
festivals in Europe and the US. She is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program
in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
JENNIFER PARKER-STARBUCK is a Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre,
and Performance Studies at Roehampton University, London. Her book,
()'borg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance,
is forthcoming with Palgrave. She is an Assistant Editor for PAJ: A Journal
of Performance and Art and an Associate Editor for the International journal of
Performance Arts and Digital Media. She received her Ph.D. from the City University
of New York Graduate Center and was the former Managing Editor of SEEP.
HOWARD PFLANZER is a playwright, lyricist, poet, and director. He is
Adjunct Associate Professor of Theatre and Speech at John Jay College. His
plays include On the Border (about Walter Benjamin), Living with History: Camus
Sartre De Beauvoir, and the opera Dream Beach. He received his M.F.A. from
the Yale School of Drama in Playwriting and Dramatic literature, and was
a Fulbright Scholar in India. His publications have appeared in The Quarler!J,
TDR, New York Theatre Review, Cultural Logic, and Socialism and Democracy.
VESSELA S. WARNER holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History and Criticism
from the University of Washington and M.A. in Slavic literature from
Sofia University. She teaches Theatre History at the University of Alabama,
Birmingham. Her research focuses on South Slavic literature and drama,
cultural identity, postcolonial studies, and theatre criticism. She has published
in Theatre and Performance in Eastern Europe: The Changing Scene (Scarecrow Press,
2008) and Performing Dreams into Being: Native American Women:r Theatre (Miami
University Press, 2009), as well as in several academic journals.
NATALIA YAKUBOVA received her Candidate of Sciences in Theatre
Studies at the Russian Academy of Theatre Art (GITIS), Moscow. Since 1994,
she has been a research fellow in the Department of Central European Art,
Russian State Institute of Art Studies. In addition to research on the history of
Polish culture in the "Young Poland" period and Witkacy, she has published
mainly on contemporary theatre. Currently she is working on a book about the
most recent decade in the theatre of Russia, Poland, and Hungary.
93
Photo Credits
Republic of Dreams
Robert Tobey, courtesy of Double Edge Theatre
Bold Women in the Theatre Conversation
Chelynn Tetreault, courtesy of Double Edge Theatre
Being 2 and Tu!J
Roman Ekimov, courtesy of Praktika Theatre
Plavwrights Before the Fall
Gabriella Gyorffy
OurOass
Robert Workman
Bruno Jasienski portrait
Bruno Jasieriski, The Nannequins' Ball, ed. and tr. Daniel Gerould (Amsterdam: Harwood,
2000).
Mannequins' Ball
Ryan Hubbs
Mannequins' Ball. interrupted
Francesca Woodman
Still courtesy of Joanna Warsza and Mikolaj Dlugosz
Joanna Warsza Krzysztof Zarebski, and Marek Bartelik
Annemarie Poyo Furlong
}aC(.enie and Rabin J1.aharal i Go/em
Howard Pflanzer
The Vme of Mothers
Przemyslaw Graf, courtesy of Theatre of the Eighth Day
Zi/1
Stills courtesy of Lubuskie Film Summer
94 Slavic and East European Performance Vol 30, No. 1
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATI ONS
Playwrights Before the Fall:
Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution
Edited by Daniel Gerould, preface by Dragon Klai c
Playwrights Before the Fall: Eastern European
Drama in limes of Revolution contains
translations of Portrait by Slawomir Mrozek
(Poland); Military Secret by Dusan Jovanovi c
(Slovenia) ; Chicken Head by Gyorgy Spiro
(Hungary); Sorrow, Sorrow, Fear, the Pit and
the Rope by Karel Steigerwald (Czechos-
lovakia); and Horses at the Window by Matei
i ~ n i e c (Romania). In this unique anthology,
playwrights examine the moral and psycho-
logical dimensions ofthe transformations tak-
ing place in society during the years of transi-
tion from totalitarianism to democracy.
Written before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the five plays reveal the absurdities
of an inflexible system based on belief in abstract ideology that sacrifices the
individual to dogma. These authors bear witness to the ravages of commu-
nism and to the traumas of its disintegration and lend their voices to the
frightened and manipulated whose lives were stunted by entropic regimes.
Price US $2o.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
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Visit our website at : www.thesegalcenter.org Contact: [email protected] or 2128171868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Czech Plays: Seven New Works
Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, and Daniel Gerould
Czech Plays: Seven New Works is
the first English-language antholo-
gy of Czech plays written after the
1989 "Velvet Revolution." These
seven works explore sex and gen-
der identity, ethnicity and vio-
lence, political corruption, and
religious taboos. Using innovative
forms and diverse styles, they
tackle the new realities of Czech
society brought on by democracy and globalization with char-
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Price US$2o.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
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jan Fabre: I Am A Mistake. Seven Works
for the Theatre
Edited and forward by Frank Hentschker
Flemish-Dutch theatre artist Jan
Fabre is considered one of the most
innovative and versatile artists of
his day. Over the past twenty-five
years, he has produced works as a
performance artist, theatre maker,
choreographer, opera maker, play-
wright, and visual artist. This vol-
ume represents the first collection
of plays by Jan Fabre in an English
translation.
Plays include: I am a Mistake (2007), History of Tears (2005),
je suis sang (conte de fees medieval) (2001), Angel of Death
(2003) and others.
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Witkiewicz: Seven Plays
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould
WltkiCWICL
SEVEN PLAYS
This volume contains seven of Witkiewicz's most
important plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor
Brainiowicz, Gyuba/ Wahazar, The Anonymous
Work, The Cuttlefish, Dainty Shapes and Hairy
Apes, and The Beelzebub Sonata, as well as two
of his theoretical essays, "Theoretical
Introduction" and "A Few Words About the Role
of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form."
roMANIA After 2000
Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould.
Translation editors: Saviana Stanescu and Ruth Margraff.
This volume represents the first anthology of new
Romanian Drama published in the United States and
introduces American readers to compelling playwrights
and plays that address resonant issues of a post-totali-
tarian society on its way toward democracy and a new
European identity. includes the plays: Stop The Tempo
by Gianina Carbunariu, Romania. Kiss Me! by Bogdan
Georgescu, Vitamins by Vera I on, Romania 21 by ~ t e f n
Peca and Waxing West by Saviana Stanescu.
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Barcelona Ploys: A Collection of New Works by
Catalan Playwrights
Translated and edited by Marion Peter Holt and Sharon G. Feldman
The new plays in this collection represent outstand-
ing playwrights of three generations. Benet i )ornet
won his first drama award in 1963, when was only
twenty-three years old, and in recent decades he has
become Catalonia's leading exponent of thematical-
ly challenging and structurally inventive theatre. His
plays have been performed internationally and
translated into fourteen languages, including
Korean and Arabic. Sergi Belbel and Llu'lsa Cunille
arrived on the scene in the late 1980s and early
1990s, with distinctive and provocative dramatic
voices. The actor-director-playwright Pau Mir6 is a
member of yet another generation that is now
attracting favorable critical attention.
}osep M. Benet I }ornet: Two Ploys
Translated by Marion Peter Holt
)osep M. Benet i )ornet, born in Barcelona, is the author of
more than forty works for the stage and has been a lead-
ing contributor to the striking revitalization of Catalan the-
atre in the post-Franco era. Fleeting, a compelling
"tragedy-within-a-play," and Stages, with its monological
recall of a dead and unseen protagonist, rank among his
most important plays. They provide an introduction to a
playwright whose inventive experiments in dramatic form
and treatment of provocative themes have made him a
major figure in contemporary European theatre.
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Buenos Aires in Translation
Translated and Edited by Jean Graham-Jones
BAiT epitomizes true international theatrical collabora-
tion, bringing together four of the most important con-
temporary playwrights from Buenos Aires and pairing
them with four cutting-edge US-based directors and
their ensembles.
Plays include: Women Dreamt Horses by Daniel
Veronese; A Kingdom, A Country or a Wasteland, In the
Snow by Lola Arias; ExAntwone by Federico Leon; Panic
by Rafael Spregelburd. BAiT is a Performance Space 122
Production, an initiative of Salon Volcan, with the sup-
port of l nstituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of
Argentina in New York.
Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus
Translated and Edited by David Willinger
Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch
language theatre, poetry, and prose. Flemish by birth and
upbringing, Claus is the author of some ninety plays, nov-
els, and collections of poetry. He is renowned as an enfant
terrible of the arts throughout Europe. From the time he
was affiliated with the international art group, COBRA, to
his liaison with pornographic film star Silvia Kristel, to the
celebration of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium, Claus has
careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden
and formidable. Claus takes on all the taboos of his times.
Price US$15.00 plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager. Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
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