T he fusion of the principles of Stanislavski and of Meierhold may be considered as the creation of a Center median theatre which will be a combination of the Left revolutionary with the Right reactionary theatres. Or it may be thought of as the combination of outward form with inner meaning and feeling. Or, as a development from that, it may be considered the creation of a theatre in which the actor and the regisseur will work side by side with a balanced share in creation.
Those who wish to behold in the theatre only a reflection of political evolution will see in such a development the arrival of a compromise which carries the Soviet Union away from the original radical program of the Communist Party. They can support their theory by citing retrenchments and modifications of the Party in other fields and point to the day when in the theatre as elsewhere the influence of bourgeois conceptions will return.
While it is possible to look upon this very apparent movement in the theatre as an indication of externally moderating tendencies, I prefer to consider it solely from within the theatre, and to explain it as an effort to take what is good from Meierhold and what is good from Stanislavski and weld them into a new form that will contain elements of stylization with elements of psychological realism. I further see in the compromise an effort to weigh the importance of the regisseur against the value of the
actor’s personal contribution and to make use of them both in such a way that the production will get full value from the contributions of each. I believe that the apparent way to the future Soviet theatre lies along such a path. If Vakhtangov had been able to lead the theatre down this path of compromise, he might have brought about the creation of something new that would no longer be in itself a compromise. Perhaps it will be accomplished anyway.
In the theories of Vakhtangov are the seeds of this compromise, the effort to reconcile Stanislavski and Meierhold, contained in a criticism of them both, and a prophecy of the form which a living Russian theatre must take. We have, however, far more than that, something which the politically minded brethren may chew on. I propose to discuss Vakhtangov first as a sort of symbol of the artist of the theatre in his relation to the past and the future in Russia.
Eugene Vakhtangov came to his artistic maturity at almost the exact moment when the Revolution broke. Behind him he had the training of the system of Stanislavski whose most brilliant pupil he was. He had beside him the full development of Meierhold’s art which was at that moment in its most advanced revolutionary expression. He had all around him the opening vistas of the proletarian Revolution and before him a new society creating a new civilization. He had the advantage over both Stanislavski and Meierhold, for the roots of each of them were in other soil. Vakhtangov’s creative influence derived from all these sources, but the influence of the Revolution was the strongest. He had, however, strong ties to the past. Let us consider them first.
Vakhtangov had learned from Stanislavski that the preparatory stages of creation in acting were conscious—the
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collection of material, the study of life, the other things which form the first part of the system. Then, on top of this and really more essential, came intuitive creation. When the Marxists arrived, they opposed this, calling it "subjective idealism.” The Marxian theatre said that intuition could not work independently; all creative processes must be conscious and rational. At first Vakhtangov could not agree with this Marxian approach. He held a Tolstoyan belief that every play should serve the good; this was combined with a certain mystical attitude toward art. He believed that the theatre was like a monastery isolated from the human world. This isolation existed in order that the actor might be cleansed through his separation from the "world of sinners.” He would be as a priest in that "Temple of Art” which Stanislavski called the theatre. Oblivious of the world and its problems, he could devote himself to the perfection of the art in himself.
It was with this attitude that he undertook the direction of the Habima Theatre, that Jewish company which New York saw many years ago in its production of "The Dybbuk,” produced by Vakhtangov. Huntly Carter suggests that in his direction of the Habima he was influenced by the Tibetan mysteries. This may be, and if it is so, we see what a long way Vakhtangov had to go to become a Marxist.
To rid himself of these mystical tendencies, and undertake the new conception of art and the theatre, was a struggle for Vakhtangov, as it was for all others brought up in the artistic beliefs of the early twentieth century. But during the months when he lay dying in a hospital (he died in 1922, still a young man) criticism of the existing systems in the theatre occupied all his thoughts and finally the change in him was effected.
Vakhtangov did not want small things in the theatre; he demanded grandiose, revolutionary, philosophical
themes. The theatre must tackle the deepest things in the life of the time. For it seemed to him that the whole fate of the human race was then at stake. One could not stand
i
by like the reactionaries and miss the opportunity to participate. But participation through the production of melodramas such as were being put out by the early Revolutionary writers was entirely inadequate. There was not enough criticism and too much naturalism. He wanted something to contrast with these unimportant plays, and if big plays were not being written, one must turn to the classics. In this he was following the conclusions of all other intelligent workers in the Soviet theatre. But he demanded not the contained romantic classicism of, say, Schiller, but rather the rebel attitude of Byron.
His chief trouble earlier had come in trying to understand how it was possible to present one’s personal attitude in and toward an obraz (the image of the character an actor creates) without its limiting one’s art. Vakhtangov now said that the actor must have a critical attitude toward the part he enacts. He must be able to present both the action and his ideological attitude toward the action. In other words, he must both give the image of the character and then make his own comment upon it. In order to do this he and his obraz can no longer be one. This method requires subjectivity plus objectivity. Without doing this a classic remains only a study in literary archeology. By adding one’s own criticism (which may be in agreement or disagreement with the author’s point of view), one makes the play live in the spirit of the present.
From this Vakhtangov passed to his conception of the form of the performance as a whole. First comes the idea of the play; then the artistic characteristics of the company, which are the vehicle for the conveyance of the idea; then the contemporary ideological problems of the period. Every play must have its own method of expression, its
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own style, but never, whatever the play and whatever the style, must the theatre be forgotten. There was to be no fourth wall in his stage; one actor talks to another, but only in order consciously to tell the audience something. In all this he followed, as you see, close to Meierhold’s theories.
The theatre must find the truest form for the performance, Vakhtangov believed, and that form must come from the content of the play. But the content must be reinterpreted through the eyes of the collective to accord with the difference in time. Given a production of "Julius Caesar,” by way of illustration, the collective should not attempt a reconstruction of Roman civilization and Roman thought as the Art Theatre had done; neither should it attempt a reconstruction of Elizabethan civilization and an approximation of Shakespeare’s contemporary thought. Rather it should pay the classic the great compliment of acknowledging its universality in time and try to make "Julius Caesar” an expression of the collective’s own civilization and its own thought. Only thus can it live in today.
The conclusion which Vakhtangov draws from this is that revolutionary method therefore harmonizes with revolutionary content. After ten years you could not do the same play with the emphasis in the same places. Performances must grow and change. A decade hence "Julius Caesar” will have a still different meaning from what it has today. The form of the performance must also correspond to the creativeness of the collective and its contemporaneous ideas. "The Life of Man” could not be produced today as it was twenty-five years ago at the Art Theatre, he said, because it is decadent from the standpoint of our life now. But this attitude does not involve the same criticism of the Art Theatre as Meierhold leveled against it, for it is not essentially aesthetic criticism. Meierhold would have criticized its production as much at that time as after
the Revolution. Vakhtangov, however, would have had to say that actualism, the realism of the Art Theatre, on the one hand and the mystic and pessimistic "Life of Man” on the other, were expressions of the artistic characteristics of the MXAT and of contemporary thought at the time that it was produced, and that therefore it was correct.
Consequently, Vakhtangov broke with the Art Theatre not because he was opposed to its artistic principles as such, as was Meierhold, but because he believed that naturalism and the style of the MXAT had limitations in the new regime and were not the correct expression of it. For some time Vakhtangov had felt that from a technical point of view, the Art Theatre’s concentration on the inner meaning of a role and the "sub-text” of a play, which was perfect for Chekhov, was not always successful when applied to authors who did not write like Chekhov. The theatre, furthermore, now played to the people and not to a small group of bourgeois intellectuals. Vakhtangov wrote in his diary, "The red line of Revolution has divided the world into old and new. If an artist wants to create after the Revolution, he must create together with the people— not for their sake, not out of them, but together with them. People are creating new forms of life. They are creating through the Revolution because they have no other means to shout into the world about injustice. About which people are we talking? About the people who are creating the Revolution!” With the assumption of this attitude, Vakhtangov had completed his break not only with the Moscow Art Theatre but with Meierhold as well. Let me explain.
Vakhtangov demanded maximum sharpness and definite form to bring out the substance of a play. The productions which were his personal creation, "The Miracle of St. Anthony” and "Princess Turandot,” bear the stamp of that sharpness. This style called forth a special form of thought
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in art—active thinking closely connected with actual life. Class and Party characteristics must be combined with psychological depth. It was at this time that Meierhold was developing his constructivist methods. Vakhtangov did not entirely understand them, but he sounded out certain weaknesses in them. He objected to such complete technical formalism as Meierhold sought. He objected to Meier- hold’s seeking a form for the new theatre that would be taken from old theatres. He felt that Meierhold’s art was all externals and no substance. He objected to what he considered was his mechanistic materialism. Meierhold was making a distinction between the truth of emotions and theatrical truth and denying the former; this Vakhtangov could not accept. In his theatre Meierhold worked, as part of his mechanistic conventionalization, for complete depersonalization; on his stage every soldier looked and acted like every other soldier—one soldier or ten were alike the symbol of all soldiery; every aristocrat and every "com- somol” were like every other on his stage, for they were but stylized symbols for aristocracy or the Young Communist Party. This Vakhtangov objected to, feeling that Meierhold was wasting valuable material when he threw away individuality from characterization.
Vakhtangov felt (and I agree with him, as I have said) that Meierhold did not understand those times. Perhaps, he had already jumped to the future (there I do not agree), but that was very nearly as bad as hanging on in the past, for the theatre above all must feel the moment of the present; and the obrazy of the future, said Vakhtangov, must be built on concrete elements from the present day. And when Vakhtangov leveled this criticism against Meierhold, we must remember that he was criticizing the work of the whole Revolutionary theatre of that day, for Meierhold was its dictator, and beside his there was no proletarian theatre of any consequence; the rest were aca-
demic. Thus Vakhtangov was, in a sense, the creator of a new kind of Revolutionary theatre, made in protest against the first (Meierholdian) one; a theatre which was, as I believe, much more actually proletarian and much more in the spirit of Marxian art.
Vakhtangov also made certain pronouncements on method in the theatre. The whole collective of the theatre must participate in the plot of the regisseur and of the dramatist. If the actors do not accept the regisseur’s plan, then it is inadequate, for the actor is the one who must realize the plan. The regisseur, however, must give unification and line to the play. That "maximum sharpness and definite form” which Vakhtangov underlined are necessarily the responsibility of the regisseur. He must, nevertheless, develop the creative initiative of the actors. This theory is not far removed from Stanislavski’s attitude toward rehearsal, but there are some differences in its practice as we shall soon see. Vakhtangov did not accept a passive attitude on the part of an actor. The spirit of the new Russia must have its expression in the theatre collective where all are to share in a common creative experience. In the theatre of Meierhold, leader of the Revolutionary theatre, this was denied the artist.
This analysis of the evolution in the thinking processes of a leading artist in the theatre of the early days of the Revolution, when as yet it knew not what course to pursue and when not all men could follow the erratic genius of Meierhold, reveals, I hope, the profound change which came over the art of the Russian theatre both in ideology and in practice, and the change which was effected in the attitude of the individual artist. I hope, too, that it makes clearer the reason why the younger theatres, while learning their lessons from the Stanislavski system and Meierhold’s ideas, have looked back at Vakhtangov as their real progenitor. In him we have, it seems to me, the translator of
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the great theatrical heritage of Russia into the terms of the modern Soviet stage.
Although Vakhtangov never entirely severed his connections with the Moscow Art Theatre, he became active in the work of its First Studio and was one of its guiding intelligences for several years. Then he himself organized another studio group which became the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. This he directed until his death. Afterwards, this Studio, like the First, severed its association with the MXAT and became a theatre in its own right, calling itself after its founder.
2
When Vakhtangov died, his disciples set to work to carry on his principles. They have not been entirely successful: too often there have been small and mediocre plays, and to cover up the shallowness they have had recourse to rather empty decorative forms. Occasionally they have done the sort of thing which Vakhtangov would have done: Moscow critics cite "Debacle” and "Egor Bulichev” as two.
The ten disciples who remain in the Vakhtangov Theatre have kept one fundamental demand of their master close to their hearts. "Look at life,” said Vakhtangov, "and make that your guide in creation.” When he said that, he was not advocating naturalism. Fie meant, "Let the theatre never consider itself an end in itself. Let it always go hand in hand with the current of life and be a contribution to it, as it receives its color from it.” Neither Stanislavski nor Meierhold have been able to do this consistently throughout their careers. The Vakhtangov Theatre has tried hard to keep this commandment. As life has changed in Russia during the years since his death, so necessarily their theatre has changed, and those critics who say that Vakhtangov’s
theatre today is not doing what he would do, do not realize that they don’t know what he would be doing today, for it certainly would not be what he was doing fifteen years ago.
The ten followers of Vakhtangov have remembered another admonition of their leader: ''Each play should have its own style.” Through these years they have tried to approach each production with a fresh attitude, ready to work out new forms and ever fearful of getting fixed in one style. They have felt the weakness of the Art Theatre to be its insistence on weighing down every play with its psychological feelings and inner meanings; the definite form and the maximum sharpness they value so much have sometimes disappeared in that way. They have felt the weakness of Meierhold on the other hand to be his continued refusal to use any psychology at all.
Within their own theatre they have established two trends. One is chiefly psychological and the other decorative. They have tried to give to plays which needed sound character analysis the kind of treatment which would emphasize these inner qualities. They have tried to invest plays chiefly theatrical with a vivid colorful spectacular form. "Egor Bulichev” and their late 1935 production of "Aristocrats” were planned as psychological studies. "Intervention” and "Love and Intrigue,” equally effective pieces of theatre, were approached from the opposite angle.
The result of this effort to give each play its own style has resulted in making the Vakhtangov Theatre exceedingly flexible, in making it almost "all things to all men.” This has been possible chiefly because individual regisseurs within the organization have been allowed to develop each according to his own inclinations. Zakhava has become the leading regisseur for plays which require psychological handling, and Simonov and Akimov (the latter not a regular member of the theatre but a frequent guest-director) have shown the greatest talent for devising productions of
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outward theatrical effectiveness. When a play calling for one kind of treatment is decided upon, it is turned over to that director who can realize it in the most telling way. The decision as to what the treatment will be is a collective one, for the Theatre remembers that it was another of Vakhtangov’s beliefs that the whole collective must participate in the creation. Let us see how this works out.
I have chosen the Vakhtangov Theatre to be the first representative of the theatre of the future because it is a theatre where regisseurs and actors meet and share in the creation of a production. This meeting suggests that the style will be one in which the actor will contribute psychological portrayal of character (inheritance from the Art Theatre) to which the regisseur will add a more definite outer theatrical form than do the Art Theatre regisseurs (influence of Meierhold). I have already pointed out that Vakhtangov wished this to be so. Thus there will be collective plus individual creation in the process of production. In that the Vakhtangov is like the majority of Moscow theatres today, although certain parts of its collective functioning are unique.
First, of course, comes the choice of a play; this is the collective’s responsibility. The Artistic Director of the Theatre, together with the Literary Adviser (every good Soviet theatre has its literary adviser who is really the play- reader and also in charge of the repertoire) having found what he considers to be a likely script, invites the author to read it to the Theatre. The entire company assembles to hear this reading and afterwards votes. If many of the actors dislike the play, it is abandoned forthwith and the search for another play is begun. If the play is acceptable to the company, the Artistic Director chooses a regisseur for the play. His choice must be confirmed by the Artistic Council of the Theatre which consists of thirteen other members beside himself. Ten of these are part of the original group personally associated with Vakhtangov. The
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others are elected by the collective. They form a representative body of the "actors’ shop,” as the acting company is called.
The regisseur’s first work is the preparation of a report based on a formal questionnaire which all regisseurs are supposed to fill out. This enquete , as it is called, has the following form:
1. Theme of the play
2. Chief ideas in the subject
3. Social meaning
4. Chief points showing this social meaning
5. Chief points of form:
a. Principles
b. Methods of work with actor
c. Relation,between actor and character
d. Principles of acting, speech and movement
e. Mass scenes
f. Creation of mise-en-scene
6 . Setting
a. Construction
b. Architecture
c. Painting
7. Visual impressions to be received which unite the per¬
formance
8. Role and meaning of the properties
9. Costume and make-up
10. Musical setting
11. Faults of previous productions to be rectified in this one
12. Whither in this production?
13. An analysis of the contents of each scene and its meaning
When this report is prepared, 1 the entire actors’ shop meets to consider it. The author is also present and if he dis-
1 1 have included as an appendix to this volume the regisseur’s report of Zakhava for Pogodin’s "Aristocrats,” based on the points of the enquete, to which I wish to call attention at this point, and I recommend that the reader
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agrees with the regisseur’s interpretation or proposed method of handling any point, this is his opportunity to express his opinion in the presence of the entire theatre. After the collective has discussed the report and has accepted it—and only then—work on the play begins.
Once his plan of production is agreed upon by the collective, the director is in full charge. There will be, however, frequent meetings of the Artistic Council during this period of rehearsing, usually following the run-through of an act in its presence. At these meetings it will discuss with the director the progress which is being made and make suggestions which he is, however, at liberty to disregard if he sees fit. This periodic overseeing by the Artistic Council would remind a member of the New York Theatre Guild staff of the "death watches” of Guild productions, those run-throughs attended by the Board of Managers of that organization which are held for the same purpose as these at the Vakhtangov. The Council continues to advise with the director about the sets, music, and all the details of production as they are worked out, and since its membership is large, they can bring a good deal of pressure to bear upon the director if they agree among themselves, and when they do not, he has at least a variety of ideas to assist him.
With this organization and plan of production in mind, let us go to rehearsals at this theatre as we have gone at the other theatres, in order to see the plans work out.
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3
The play which I watched is a new Soviet one, "Shlyapa,” which has a colloquial meaning rather like our word "booby.” It is one of those modern Russian comedies of factory manners with which the Moscow stages abound. It
skip to it before continuing with this chapter, for from it he can discover all the elements that go into the creation of a Vakhtangov production.
is a long, complicated and, for the most part, dull opus with innumerable characters and scenes which tell us about the problems of factory management. Because the newly appointed factory director seems to devote his entire attention to planting flower beds in the courtyard, to repainting the workshops, and to carrying on a campaign against dirt, his fellow workers think he is a fool. When he fires an old laborer—thirty-five years in the factory— for chronic drunkenness, their dissatisfaction reaches its peak. But the manager sticks by his decision with sudden unexpected firmness. They soon discover that their "gardener” knows more about industrial problems than they thought, and the factory is not only cleaned up and beautified, but it raises its standard of production and its output. The "booby’s” chief accomplishment, however, seems to be the change of heart which he effects in the workers. From a surly, lazy, bibulous crew they become conscientious, enthusiastic laborers. The old drunk is the major object lesson. Under the application of the manager’s persuasive methods of applied psychology, his habits of a lifetime are transformed, he is accepted back into the laboring fold, a sober man, and the iniquitous bottle is replaced by a healthful glass of tea which he waves aloft in triumph during the joyful finale that celebrates his return to grace.
With such bromidic ideas and with characters who develop as obviously as the ideas, there was really little that could be done with the play but make it as bright as possible. There was no deep psychological study necessary. Reuben Simonov was the logical director. If we watch it from first rehearsal to last it will occupy us four months, which is about the average length of time for preparation of a play. Rehearsals are prompt in this theatre and run from eleven to twelve-thirty and from one to two-thirty daily except "free-days,” which are the Soviet counterpart of Sundays.
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When the parts are distributed at the Vakhtangov, the actor is not told what type he is to impersonate or anything about the role. Instead, he goes home and after examination of it, comes back and in a round-table discussion outlines his idea of the character. He has probably chosen some type which he has observed; his descriptive analysis, at any rate, will be of external qualities. The director may disagree or have further suggestions; perhaps the fellow actors will have an idea for their partner’s impersonation. Together they will talk about the quality of voice he shall use, his gait, idiosyncrasies of manner, facial expressions, even the clothes he shall wear. Shall he wear a beard, does he carry a cane, does his suit fit, does he speak loudly or softly, does he walk on the heel or the ball of the foot? They paint a vivid and minute verbal portrait of every finished character. It is quite objective, to be sure, but Vakhtangov’s demand for sharpness can best be fulfilled by looking at the outside of the man. If you try to get within him too soon, you lose perspective and get muddled up in the inner complexities of his soul and your portrait is apt to lose its contours. Approach the inner man through his external form. This is more or less along the line of that recent experiment which we saw the MXAT making in their theory of physical action, except that here they say, approach, but never become, the inner man.
When this preliminary work with the obraz has been done, the reading rehearsals begin, a scene at a time. It was at one of these that I made my entrance. A dozen or fifteen artists were seated about a long table in the white Empire foyer of the theatre. The first thing that astonished me was their youth. Hardly any actor seemed to be beyond thirty, some looked as though they were still in their teens. But youth in the U.S.S.R. holds much more responsible positions in every field than it does in America
and this is true in the theatre too. Outside of the Maly and the Art Theatre, I dare say that no theatre in Moscow has more than half a dozen members who are over forty. In this rehearsal all were modestly, even drably dressed. All were very quiet and very serious. There was nothing glamorous there. No one would imagine that these poor, unassuming boys and girls were the same swashbuckling romantic dandies and sophisticated ladies in satins and velvets whom I had seen the night before re-creating the lush Paris of Balzac in "The Human Comedy.” They must have added a cubit to their stature, ten years to their age, and an unbelievable amount of savoir faire to their manner!
The acts of the play were divided into a number of scenes and these were again subdivided so that the work was taken up in small sections as at the MXAT and Meier- hold’s, except that the kuski here were on the whole a little longer and were more often divided on a basis of form and action than of thought, emotion, or idea. As at the MXAT , one act is completed before work is begun on the next. That day’s rehearsal covered only two pages, but from them was drawn everything that the director wished the cast to get. The passage was read through once without stopping. It was the beginning of a scene in which the workers return to their old shop to find that the manager has replaced their old lathes and machines with new ones, has cleaned up an old smoking corner which was their favorite, has lightened and freshened the shop. The director took it up line by line, discussing the effect to be produced—their surprise, their pleasure mixed with apprehension, their discomfort. He outlined the business which he had planned for it—the way the crowd would enter, which men would form little groups together, which would be solitary figures. Already he began to work on tempo in the delivery of the lines. He wanted to have many lines delivered simultaneously, and this he worked out forth-
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with. He seemed to be setting the aural effects of his performance from the beginning.
"I want to work in this production for the psychological motivation for mass movement rather than for abstract groupings,” Simonov tells his cast. "The problem will be to fix the concentration of the audience on one man in a crowd of which all the members are in movement. This we tried to do in the cafe scene in 'Intervention* and we succeeded, but we had an unusually tense situation to assist us. Here the audience will be colder. In this scene with the lathes when the workers return to find their shop remodeled, there will be much movement, but we must concentrate the audience’s attention only on the effect it produces in a few of the men, on Bubinsov, the drunkard, in particular. There are other scenes like this one throughout the play. I remember once watching a street fight from the opposite sidewalk. Naturally a crowd gathered. People would stop as they walked by; little boys would run out from near-by doors. But throughout all this complicated pattern of moving forms, coming and going, stopping and moving on, my attention, like everyone else’s, was concentrated on the two struggling figures. When I suddenly realized this, I began to consider the whole picture and to unravel the movement of the onlookers. We must build up a comparable situation on our stage if we wish to focus the audience’s attention where we will it to be.”
With this problem before them, which they will jointly seek to solve, the director and his cast proceed with rehearsals. After the whole scene had been rehearsed in sections in this way, the actors began to "walk” the scene and the work on action and business began. This takes the most time here as at the Meierhold Theatre. The director orders the arrangement of furniture and props at the first rehearsal, for as in all theatres, props are at hand from the be-
ginning. The actors then proceed to run through the scene without direction from the regisseur, working out their own business and "crosses” based on his remarks during the readings. After rehearsing through once, they start again and this time the director begins to make alterations in what they have extemporized and in what he originally planned. He introduces more business.
These rehearsals continue until the entire act is covered. All this time the actors are expanding their own characterizations, they are introducing bits of business and spinning out action which will define them, they suggest certain props which would be useful to them. The actress playing the scrub-woman in the factory’s offices rehearses with something in her mouth to suggest the absence of teeth. The old clerk works out, on a suggestion from the director that he-might be tubercular, an elaborate system of coughs and business with an overcoat draped about his shoulders as he walks through the factory’s corridors. They are making what I call a collective creation. Together with the director they build up the act with everything that both he and they can contribute. After some five weeks of work on this one act, they are ready for a run-through before the Artistic Council. It is apparent at this run- through, which takes place in the large foyer, that the act has been built up too much; they have overloaded it with their inventions. This was consciously done, however, and now must come a cutting and simplifying process. Simonov believes, like many good playwrights, in putting forth all his ideas on a subject to start with, then paring away what is least important and effective.
The designer has arranged for his first showing to follow this first run-through, so the entire company adjourns to the Scenic Department offices where they are shown the maquette , or stage model, with every scene depicted and some approximation of the lighting. The designer explains
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his ideas and the technical mounting which he plans. The exterior of a lighted factory at night, with its large, dirty, small-paned windows, will form a background for the prologue. In the foreground a single tree in a field of refuse suggests the conditions there before the arrival of the new manager. Later scenes, most of them played against a black cyclorama without ceiling or side maskings, show various parts of the factory—the manager’s office, workshops, other offices. There are smaller scenes showing two workers’ families’ quarters. The final scenes show the improved factory, modern workers’ apartment houses, blue sky and bright green grass. The many scene shifts will be handled by two or three wagon stages, for the Vakhtangov does not use a revolving stage. All these plans as well as the run-through are discussed by the Artistic Council assembled in conclave afterwards. To its meeting in the high- ceilinged Conference Room with charmingly painted French rococo wall panels the designer is invited, and their criticisms, which are many and which go down into the smallest details, show that the Council, although almost entirely composed of actors, has more than a superficial knowledge of all aspects of the production. Few groups of a dozen actors assembled in an American theatre could discuss as intelligently the problems of scene design as can these artists of the Vakhtangov—but then there is no need, for there are still fewer groups of a dozen actors who are running theatres in the United States.
The second act is now taken up in the same way as the first. While Simonov is rehearsing it, his two assistant regisseurs hold rehearsals of the first act in another part of the theatre. These assistants are very different from Meierhold’s, for they make their own contribution to the creation of the production, and have been allowed from the first rehearsal to offer suggestions and help in planning the action. Now they tackle the problem of cutting.
and every few days Simonov reviews scenes from the first act and considers their proposed revisions. What cuts he does not approve of he restores and then makes other changes himself. The actors have by now ceased their improvisations in the first act and allow the director to mold them as he wishes. With the second act completed there is a run-through of it, and again the pruning shears are applied as the work on the next act goes forward.
Now the production meets with delay from a cause which I am prompted to mention because of the frequency with which one experiences it in Moscow. One of the principals is ill. The Russian artists are always getting sick! Yet with the rehearsal period extending over such a long time it is understandable how the health of a whole company might not remain unbroken throughout it. The artists lead very rushed and hectic lives, their energy is demanded sixteen or more hours a day, the climate is rigorous; no wonder illness overtakes them. When it does and an important actor or a number of the lesser ones are sick, rehearsals are simply called off for the time being. This is difficult in New York where time means money. But the possibility of postponing rehearsals pending the recovery of various actors is one of the contributing reasons, though a homely one, why the Russian theatre takes from four to five times as long as the American to produce a play.
You may have wondered, as I did, when I first heard of their development of the play act by act, whether the first act might not be apt to get a great deal more attention than the last. Directors in New York fear such a system, feeling that if they take up their play and perfect one act before proceeding to the next, they will spend more time than they should on the beginning and leave too little time for the end. I have to report that this occurs to a degree in Moscow, but less so than it might in America. For again,
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you see, the New York director works against a time limit which his Moscow colleague does not know. There he can postpone his opening until the last act has been rehearsed as long as the first if he feels it needs it. In point of fact, if one works as carefully on the psychological motivation of action as do the MX AT and all theatres which practice in some form or some part of its system (and the Vakhtangov is one), during the time spent on the first act certain problems are solved for the whole play and need no further consideration when they appear thereafter. The subsequent acts are much more easily rehearsed. If the actor follows the "line of the day” theory of Stanislavski, his emotions and his mental processes develop logically and easily. He reaches his climax only when he has passed through all the steps which lead to it.
Often American actors have to struggle with a climactic scene which should be as easy as any other scene for them, simply because they come upon it almost "cold.” The director is trying to work on the whole play at once, and after a week of rehearsal he has to begin on his most dramatically emotional scenes. Since these are customarily in the latter half of the play, the Soviet actor doesn’t come to them until he has lived with his part for at least a couple of months; by then he is ready to meet and conquer them.
Now that the whole play has been rehearsed act by act with periodic reviews by the Artistic Council, the assembling process begins. This lasts about a month and in the course of it much that has been created is revised, in outward effect at least. This last stand at the Vakhtangov is very like the last few days of a New York production.
For some time, as various skeletal parts of the set have been completed, rehearsals have been taking place on the stage. Because the sets are being built in the theatre, a cast has the same opportunity to familiarize itself with the form of the stage as it has to grow accustomed to the
props. By the last two weeks it is able to work in the completed set—completed, that is, in accordance with the designer’s original plans. After the set is finished, it will undergo the same amount of change as the action.
Almost every day from eleven to four the company works in the settings. After the regular evening performances there are scene and light rehearsals. At these the designer and technical director preside and then show their work next morning to the director who approves or changes various details himself. One of these days is devoted to an inspection of costume and make-up. A parade takes place and every actor’s appearance is criticized as he passes before the director and his assistants. There is nothing very unique about this procedure save that it takes place a month before the opening night and thereafter the cast rehearses off' and on in make-up and regularly in costume, so that these become as familiar to them as have the setting and props. Here, it seems to me, is another important reason for the excellence of the Moscow theatres; by the time the first night arrives, the actors are completely at home with their performance, physically as well as spiritually. There is no fumbling, only complete confidence and assurance. At the same time, they have not gone stale, for there has been constant progress up to the opening, not mere empty repetition in which things become mechanical —the obvious danger.
The orchestral accompaniment is now being added and with the introduction of music (which comes here much later than at Meierhold’s theatre) many rearrangements in action must take place, for the two must blend. The music in this particular play consists chiefly in variations on a street song to which some of the factory workers compose a simple doggerel about Bubinsov. The tune, with its peculiarly Russian minor cadence, is sung, is played on an accordion, is built up by the orchestra in the hidden pit,
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is repeated by one or another of these time and again throughout the play, now sadly, now gayly, as the mood changes. The fact that music is not part of the production from the beginning is illustrative of the fact that the first concern of the Vakhtangov is for the element of psychological characterization—the actor’s contribution. When it has been set, then the form and punctuation of the performance, in which music is of great importance, are added on top of it by the regisseur.
The last minute drive—here a last week drive—will be to speed up and tighten the production. Even up to this point the performance has been allowed to run much too long. Now the prologue with its stark tree will be eliminated, one or two short scenes will be cut out entirely. Simonov, in the last three or four days, puts in a dozen final touches which give the play his signature: he is distributing the action over more area—sending actors up to the stage boxes for sharp surprise effects, a young trio of workers with guitar and accordion to sing the Bubinsov song again from there, bringing actors in from doors in front of the proscenium, pulling scenes down onto the Vakhtangov’s sloping apron while scene shifts go on behind the drawn house curtain as I saw in "Intervention” (incidentally, Simonov also directed this latter play); he is emphasizing a bar of music here, picking up a bit of business with a sharper spotlight there. One whole inset is repainted, a door is rebuilt, one shift done with moving platforms in view of the audience, is entirely rearranged to make for more smoothness and speed.
Most of the rehearsals now are run-throughs, one each day, without interruption and with the directors taking notes. The Artistic Council is in regular attendance at the last three or four rehearsals and the play takes its final form at its collective consultations. As in the beginning stages, so at the end, the play is a collective creation ex-
ecuted through a single intelligence. Finally the Repertcom is invited, then follow the invitation dress rehearsals and at last, four months after its first reading, "Shlyapa” is shown to the Moscow public.
4
"For a long time I sought the kind of theatre which I wanted my own to be,” Nikolai Okhlopkov, director of the Moscow Realistic Theatre, told me, "but nowhere was it to be found. The theatre of Stanislavski was not it, for there the audience was forgotten behind the fourth wall which its artists threw up to separate themselves from it, and that I did not want. The theatre of Meierhold was not it, for there the actor vulgarized himself, he played directly to the audience as a clown does, and that I did not want.
"One day during the Civil War I stood on a railway station platform. From one direction a troop train drew in and stopped. In a moment another troop train arrived from the opposite direction and halted across the platform. Soldiers poured out to refill their tea-kettles, buy a bun, or stretch their legs. Near me one man alighted. From the other train came another soldier. They saw each other, ran forward and embraced, unable to speak for emotion. They were old comrades, dearest friends, whom the war had separated. There on a station platform, as one went one way and the other another, they met for a moment, clasped hands, and parted. In that instant I knew that that was what I wanted my theatre to be—a meeting where two dear friends experience an emotional union, in which for that moment all the rest of the world may be forgotten. Ever since I have worked for that. In my theatre, actor and spectator must clasp hands in fraternity. On my stage,
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when the mother cries, a dozen in the audience must be ready to spring forward to dry her tears.”
Okhlopkov has created such a theatre. He has succeeded in effecting the meeting which he wanted between artist and spectator, or between playwright and spectator, and he causes it to be intensely emotional. There is no fourth wall here—no wall at all, save the ones which enclose actors and spectators alike. The spectator is always swept into the stream of action, just as I was at "The Iron Flood,” but at the same time the actor seems not to be acting to the audience; he seems somehow to take it for granted that the spectator is a fellow actor and performs with him and not for him.
Okhlopkov’s method of accomplishing this is a direct one, but it is by no means original. In theory he has borrowed a great deal from Meierhold, and the form of his theatre is just that set down by Adolphe Appia in his last books, VCEuvre d’Art and Art Vivant ou Nature Morte, where he said that "the new theatre should be a large bare empty room without stage or auditorium. A platform with steps leading up to it, of the size and shape required by the action of the play, should be placed therein where necessary, and the spectators should be seated according to the position of the stage.”
Okhlopkov has not followed Appia further, but so far his theatre literally fulfills Appia’s description. It is a small one with a balcony across one end. The rest of the hall is completely empty and there is no proscenium arch. The stage is composed of moveable "parallel” platforms which may be set up in any arrangement in any part of the hall. The seats are also in moveable sections which may be set up around the stage according to its position. In "The Iron Flood” they were grouped along one side and end of the hillside which was the stage. Sometimes the form may be circus-like, with the audience sitting in a circle around the
stage; sometimes tlie stage may be at one end of tbe room like a dais in front of which the spectators sit facing it as in a lecture hall; at other times, the stage may be lozengeshaped, the audience sitting in the four empty corners of the room; again, they may sit on three sides of the stage as it extends out from the fourth wall. In one production Okhlopkov placed much of the action on bridges set up over the heads of the audience. In "Mother” by Gorki the stage was a circular one set in the center of the house; then from this center there were four runways extending out at right angles to one another, like spokes from a hub. The runways connected with other runways that ran along the four walls of the auditorium. Actors made all their entrances and exits to the center stage along these runways.
All these devices are designed to bring about the meeting of actor and audience so that it will be impossible to separate the two—to surround the audience with actors just as the actors are surrounded by audience. In "Mother” Okhlopkov carries this so far as to have one actor hand to any spectator sitting beside the stage a loaf and a knife for him to hold. This fusion of the two he makes much more natural than has any other director whom I have ever seen attempt the same thing. Whereas Max Reinhardt, Meier- hold, and all other regisseurs have simply made the spectators more self-conscious by mingling audience and actors in ways which have seemed to me to destroy much illusion and theatrical unity, Okhlopkov makes the unity and the illusion stronger.
The reasons for this are, I think, to be found less in the method than in surrounding circumstances. In the first place, there is a much stronger bond between actor and spectator. Okhlopkov chooses only the most fiery revolutionary themes—plays wherein the playwright talks of things which the theatre’s working class audience has itself experienced. The bond is also material. Whereas the
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movement of actors in medieval robes up and down the aisles in Reinhardt’s "The Miracle” only accentuated the fashionable but anachronistic evening dress of the audience seated in Geddes’ reconstruction of a cathedral, in the Realistic Theatre spectators and actors look much the same and as one faces across the stage another part of the audience, it seems as though it might be another group of participants: there will be Red Army uniforms on the stage and in the house; there will be shawl-shrouded women and rough-bloused men in both places.
Meierhold was seeking much that same end in his early Revolutionary theatre, we are told, but if it existed then he has lost it now through "aestheticizing” away the psychological union. Although he talked directly at his audience, he spoke with a subtlety of speech and a use of symbol which estranged them, perhaps ever so slightly and it may be subconsciously. Still he talked at them rather than with them, and in doing so he lost his chance to win them. Okhlopkov’s actors seem to talk with their hearers.
Okhlopkov has felt that to make his meeting real he must keep his style realistic, almost, at times, to the point of naturalism. Abstractions, when such an end as his is in view, are dangerous, at least if the audience is a proletarian and not very sophisticated one. Therefore, although using great freedom in the architectural form of his theatre, he has continued to use real objects in their accustomed functions; he has suggested reality in the surroundings, just as in "The Iron Flood” the audience found itself in the midst of trees and bushes, tents and covered wagons, rocks and camp-fires.
Suddenly in his last production of the 1934-35 season, "Aristocrats,” the play about the building of the White Sea Canal by Gay-Pay-Oo prisoners, which Zakhava also directed for the Vakhtangov, Okhlopkov set aside this realism for a stylization again reminiscent of a Meierhold
experiment, for it largely derived from Commedia dell* Arte and from Japanese and Chinese sources. The action took place on two completely bare rectangular platforms set tangent to each other in the middle of the hall, with the upper left hand corner of one connecting with the lower right hand corner of the other. There was no scenery on these two stages. The only decorations were painted screens done in the Japanese manner which lined the walls of the house. These suggested the changing seasons with oriental sparsity of detail—an owl on a snowy pine bough against a gray blue sky indicated that it was winter; apple blossoms against a lemon yellow background suggested that spring had come. The actual props required in the business were brought on in the full light by blue- masked and dominoed attendants who in function suggested the Chinese property man. They would run on in full stage light carrying a telephone, for example, and would hold it while a character made his call; when the business was completed they would run off taking the phone with them. Or when a table was required two of these men would enter with a piece of green baize which, squatting on the floor, they would hold taut between them to suggest the table top. The rest of the play, the dialogue, the costumes, were realistic, and the combination of these conventions with the realism I found disturbing. However, this production was hailed by most Moscow critics and many foreign ones as the Realistic Theatre’s finest performance.
Nikolai Okhlopkov is now only thirty-four. The American finds something familiar about him. Perhaps it is that his appearance slightly suggests that of Lindbergh. There is the same long, lanky body, the same mop of unkempt hair, the same firm chin and eyes which the American has seen so often pictured in his newspapers over Lindbergh’s name. He has tremendous energy, is an indefatigable
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worker. His decisive manner of speaking, his rapid and emphatic gestures, as much as his ever-present gray suede zipper sweater and his gray flannel trousers, seem American.
When the Revolution came eighteen years ago, it found young Okhlopkov a sandwichman in a little Siberian town. After a short time he entered the theatre, first by working in a theatrical furnishing shop, later by doing a little acting. A mass spectacle there on May Day was his first production as a regisseur. Later he came to Moscow, worked with Meierhold as a pupil, and learned a great deal from his methods which he applies in his own rehearsals.
The Mass Theatre has always interested him. It may have influenced him in his decision to work out of a proscenium theatre into one which might be a small likeness of an arena theatre of the future. Tretyakov, prominent Soviet man of letters and of the theatre, says that he envisions a future Mass Theatre which Okhlopkov will create, where this energetic style of his, which now seems at times as though it would burst through the tiny theatre that houses him, will have room for proper expression before thousands of spectators. This, I think, is Okhlopkov’s own vision too, as it was Meierhold’s before him. Meierhold is the Moses who has led the theatre to the brink of this promised land, but it may be given to Okhlopkov to be the Joshua who will realize the true Mass Theatre.
Okhlopkov is an ardent Communist. He is one of the most striking examples of the new social artist in the Moscow theatre; he is certainly more completely the product of the Revolution and more completely under its influence than any artist we have studied. He would very much resent it, therefore, if I should suggest that his theatre be classed among the theatres created out of an artistic dictatorship rather than among those which are collective creations. But I must admit that, although his theatre, like all
other Soviet ones, is collectivist in form, in fact it exists entirely through his own ability. If we study his theatre at work we shall see that this is so.
5
The Realistic Theatre has effected two meetings—not only one in which artist and spectator may join and share an emotional catharsis, but a technical one in which certain elements of the Stanislavski theatre and of the Meier- hold theatre are joined again, but this time in different proportions.
I have explained how Okhlopkov is continually changing the form of his stage in every production. The architectural arrangement of his theatre space is one of this regisseur’s first considerations in planning a production. This stage form becomes a sort of Meierholdian )eu de theatre , and Okhlopkov works it out himself before any rehearsals are begun. He himself will decide whether the stage will be round, square or oval. Again, as in Meier- hold’s theatre, the designer’s work is subordinated to the concept of the director and is chiefly one of executing details.
When the actual rehearsal period begins, there is no time spent working on the psychological image alone. Movement and the development of the obraz advance together. In fact, from my own observations, I should say that the movement is set down first and the psychological motivation is supplied afterwards. This is somewhat similar to methods now practiced at the Vakhtangov and to the new Art Theatre experiment, but it is still closer to Meier- hold because often the psychological motivation is explained and supplied by the regisseur for the actor. In fact, at many rehearsals of Okhlopkov’s one might imagine himself at the Meierhold Theatre. Every gesture, every
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move, is as carefully demonstrated to the actor by the regisseur, and the prompt-book plays almost the same important part. The principles of bio-mechanics are not unknown in this theatre, and Okhlopkov demands the same flexibility of body in his actors as does Meierhold.
Okhlopkov composes all the movements himself and these he teaches to his company with the precision of Meierhold. Since his actors are seen in the round—sculpturally, so to speak—because the audience views them from many sides, his problem is more complicated than the regis- seur’s in a picture-frame theatre. He must design his groupings and his movement so that they will be as effective from behind as from in front. It is obviously impossible under these circumstances for the actor to work inspirationally on his own. When movement is being considered, he must turn himself over completely to the regisseur who can see him from as many different angles as will the spectator.
Okhlopkov considers his stage pictures from one angle of view when setting action and business. Then when rehearsals have advanced a little, he walks about the room and when movement seems incoherent to him from another angle, he re-creates it. I was surprised to see how similar to that of others was Okhlopkov’s direction. Composing for a space stage seems to make less difference in mounting a play than one would think—that is, if one does not compare it to the stereotyped staging of the early twentieth century box-set drama with a sofa left, a table and two chairs right, all facing the footlights. The chief thing to be kept in mind is that there must be almost constant movement. His performances are studies in per- pet-uum mobile .
From early in his rehearsals Okhlopkov works, like Meierhold, with music. His score, however, is written and is played in its final form from the start. Music is here, as
in most of the non-naturalistic theatres of Moscow, an integral part of the production, and since it serves as an accompaniment to action, it must be carefully rehearsed with it. For regular rehearsals, the piano alone is used, but full orchestra is used at all run-throughs, even those of a single act which may take place a month or two before the opening.
After all the movements are worked out and business and action are set, one begins to hear Okhlopkov say, ''Consider now why I have told you to do this; what do you feel at this point?” If the actors merely imitate his movements their performances will ring hollow, as Okhlopkov knows, so he tries to have the actor now make his own contribution from within himself. I am told that sometimes Okhlopkov has his cast prepare character sketches based on their roles which they will work out and present to the company. It is, however, in this phase of creation that the Realistic Theatre is least successful. What the actor contributes in the way of psychological reality is too often inadequate, his performance too often does ring hollow; there is a tendency toward overacting and ranting. This would never be if the actors could couple their director’s talented regie with a sound inner contribution of their own. But though they have remarkably well-trained bodies (I have watched strenuous acrobatic exercises which all the company practices in their foyer in the mornings before rehearsal starts, and it gives them superb body control), the Realistic Theatre unfortunately has few intelligent actors and Okhlopkov apparently cannot sharpen their minds and their emotional sensitivity.
I suspect that one reason the Realistic Theatre has so few capable actors (there are some, I do admit) is perhaps the reason that Meierhold has so few—Okhlopkov is a dictatorial regisseur. His demands must be executed to the letter and his temper is impatient. Regie first and acting
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afterwards. Many actors will not submit. In a theatre built along the lines of his, regie has to come first, but the director must give his actors a share in creation and perhaps a larger share than Okhlopkov is willing to allow. It is unquestionably the dynamic personality of Okhlopkov alone and his talent for the stage which has made his theatre so interesting, but might it not be still more interesting if other talent could be joined with his own? Let someone bring a little sense of humor, for instance, to lighten his ferocity.
You may wonder, after I have seemed to insist that the Realistic Theatre is a theatre of one regisseur, why I place it in this chapter called "Actors and Regisseurs Meet.” I do so because I believe that Okhlopkov wishes that meeting and that perhaps it will soon be accomplished more completely than at present. His theatre is working to find a combination of Stanislavski’s system of acting with Meierhold’s system of directing, just as is Vakhtangov’s. Okhlopkov does know what the Art Theatre teaches and he is trying to teach it to his company. In time when it is maturer (the theatre is only six years old and its actors are all quite young), the company will, I think, be able to make its contribution to the synthesis. After all, Stanislavski himself has been something of a dictator in his theatre and has yet built an ensemble of actors who are individually actively creative. So long as Okhlopkov earnestly desires that his actors share in his creation (and herein he differs from Meierhold and Tairov), one must await the day when they can and will, and the day when Okhlopkov will temper his own directing with a greater consideration for their contribution.