This academic year, Professor Gorchakov was directing two plays, a traditional one that Stanislavski had supervised originally and a contemporary one that reflected the spirit of the age. The old play was old indeed: The Two Orphans, by the nineteenth-century French writers Adolphe d’Ennery and Eugène Cormon. The story takes place in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. It’s about two sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, who go to Paris to live with their uncle, but then are forced to separate—Henrietta is kidnapped, while Louisa, the younger girl, who is blind, falls into the hands of thieves. Gorchakov had directed The Two Orphans with Stanislavski twenty years before and even given it a different title, The Sisters Gérard, so he knew the play like the back of his hand. Everybody viewed it as a melodrama, a genre drastically different from the drama in vogue.
Gorchakov made clear that he wanted to stage the play again mainly for the directing students to learn more about the practical aspects of theater arts. According to him, as a form, melodrama is more demanding on both the actors and the director. It is a more physical genre, packed with events and actions, totally different from the lyrical and poetic drama represented by the Chekhovian plays. It looks simple but is actually more complicated, because it involves so many intricate components of the theater business. The director has to know how to build the acting cast and how to make the best use of the actors, exploring the inner creativity in each of them. As a form, melodrama can train young actors and develop their potential and teach them to act lively and passionately while still remaining expressive and subtle. Conventionally, the actors capable of playing melodrama occupied the highest positions in theater companies. Therefore, Gorchakov emphasized, every one of the directing students must participate in the rehearsal intently and keep meticulous notes, which might come in handy in the future when they directed on their own.
Since it was a historical play, they worked on certain aspects carefully, such as the wardrobe, makeup, lighting, and stage sets. They also discussed the music, which in melodrama is often employed to generate a mood for a situation or to get the actors ready for a bigger moment. Every detail had to seem authentic, and there mustn’t be anything out of place or time. Because Louisa is blind, at moments the lighting had to go darker to match her fear and confusion in a new, unknown environment. Even the rags worn by the beggars had to be appropriate in material and colors. It was said that Stanislavski had always respected the audience’s attention, saying they could tell whether the polish on an actress’s fingernails was right for the period of the play.
Yomei found it quite illuminating to work on The Sisters Gérard. She was constantly learning new rules or “secrets” about the directing business. Gorchakov often reiterated what Stanislavski had taught him. For instance, he told his students, “The first movements after the curtain goes up must hold the audience’s attention. That means the beginning of a play must be simple and clear, able to establish the dramatic situation right off so as to draw the audience into the story.” Yomei wrote that down and added triple asterisks next to it.
Gorchakov’s way of working on the actors’ dialogue was quite enlightening to her too. He did what Stanislavski had done in building the psychological intensity in a scene. He instructed the three main actors in an episode to talk only with their eyes. In other words, none of them was allowed to say a word and must “speak” just with their eyes and facial expressions. The actors and the spectators were confused at first, but as they were performing voicelessly, the drama and the message they were trying to communicate grew clear and largely comprehensible. At some point Yelena (Henrietta) couldn’t hold back her words anymore and began to speak. The others followed her going verbal as well. Everyone in the rehearsal hall was struck by how colorful and intense the dialogue at once became—it was charged with inner feelings. That approach, often employed by Stanislavski, was called “the art of inner dialogue.” It followed that the actor must give full attention to other actors in a scene and keep communicating with them psychologically, so that even the gaps in dialogue can become expressive. In short, actors onstage must earn the right to open their mouths.
Gorchakov summed up the principle of ideal dialogue: “Let your heart burst through your lips.”
Yomei noticed a stack of large plywood boards, all coated with lacquer, leaning again the back wall of the rehearsal hall and wondered what they were for. In one scene, people in desperate search of the blind girl keep shouting, “Louisa! Louisa, where are you?” Even after they stopped calling, their voices still lingered in echoes.
Gorchakov smiled and told the students, “It took us a long time to find the way to reproduce the echoes on the stage, with a special arrangement of those boards.” He went on to explain that at a rehearsal two decades before, after the shouts some echoes lingered, which pleased Stanislavski greatly. The master director asked, “How did you make that happen?” No one could answer. Then they figured out it was the ceiling design that reflected the voices. Later Gorchakov tried numerous ways to reproduce the echoes and finally settled on a special arrangement of large boards.
“The lesson is,” he told the directors to be, “never neglect the minutiae, no matter how infinitesimal. You must do everything to make your play more colorful. Try to be a stickler for minor details. The accumulation of small, original touches can transform the quality of the work eventually.”
That was another lesson Yomei wrote down and cherished.
For the contemporary play, Gorchakov had been directing Leonid Leonov’s Invasion, whose plot used the Battle of Moscow as a backdrop, though the play was set in a small, central Russian town. Three years back, it had been staged at the Maly Theater, one of the oldest playhouses in the capital, and performed by some famous actors. For this play, Leonov received the Stalin Prize (1943), and its appearance was regarded as a significant event in contemporary Russian letters. After the war, the original actors were either too feeble to act or simply unavailable, so Gorchakov intended to bring it back to the stage again, even though he wouldn’t have an experienced crew. He believed it would be better to train the younger generation, so he decided on Invasion as one of the last projects for the directing seniors.
Gorchakov had six assistant directors this academic year, and Yomei was one of them. She studied the play script thoroughly and wrote out the biography of every main character. She found the power of this grand, historical play rested not only in the vast canvas of the war against the fascist invasion but also in the central idea of redemption or atonement. The principal figure is Fyodor, Doctor Talanov’s son, who was imprisoned for three years for killing a young woman out of frustrated passion. His release and return to his hometown coincide with the arrival of the German troops. Fyodor is embittered, cynical, and rough-edged. Naturally, his family receives him with reservations and trepidation. He asks his father’s patient Kolesnikov, chairman of the District Soviet’s Executive Committee, to let him join the partisan detachment so that he can fight the invaders like them. But out of caution, Kolesnikov turns him down. Later, Fyodor becomes a lone fighter, killing the Nazi soldiers on his own, but always in the same secretive manner as the partisans, leaving a “Welcome” note on the dead bodies that is signed with a pseudonym, “Andrei.” On the eve of the Nazi army’s attack on Moscow, Fayunin, a rogue believed already dead by the town and now handpicked by the Germans as their puppet mayor, gives a celebratory party. The German officers and the Talanovs, as dignitaries in town, are supposed to attend. But the German commandant Wibbel and his four bodyguards are shot dead on the street by a single attacker right before their arrival at the party. The attacker, a Russian man, is brought over for interrogation. The Talanovs are shocked to find that their son Fyodor turns out to be the hero, but he insists he is Andrei, the head of the partisans. The Germans can’t believe him, but Fyodor counters, saying, “Do you think I want to acquire the honor of swinging from the gallows on someone else’s behalf?” So his parents finally accept him as Andrei in front of the enemies and also as their son at heart.
Yomei carefully studied the scene of Fyodor’s return, in which the son coughs wheezingly and asks his father to prescribe some medicine for him. Dr. Talanov does, but the prescription turns out to be the words “Justice to human beings!” Fyodor suddenly gets emotional and cries out, “Justice?” But the father offers his explanation, saying, “I had someone brought to me in the hospital recently—a young gentleman of draft age, who was also his mother’s pride and joy. He shot a young lady no older than he was and then he shot himself. Unrequited love.”
Those words are supposed to be the foundation of the drama, namely the idea that Fyodor killed a young woman and did a three-year prison term for it. That prompts his father to give him the “justice” prescription. Yomei believed that such a detail was so crucial for the emotional basis of the play that it should be emphasized to make a firmer dramatic underpinning. Perhaps Dr. Talanov should add a phrase to his explanation, saying to Fyodor, “Unlike you, he shot himself as well.” That would emphasize the drama more. Gorchakov was delighted to hear this and agreed to add those words. He told his students that a capable director mustn’t hesitate to make this kind of small adjustment to improve the dramatic effect.
He also said this play was a great challenge to both the director and the actors, because every sentence and every phrase must be said naturally and be psychologically right. While still striving for subtlety, there is the historical magnitude that must manifest the zeitgeist. Every small detail must echo the rest of the play. Indeed, Yomei could see the sophisticated directorial skills employed in developing the drama. Initially Fayunin, the puppet mayor, is like a mummy, a dead man who has returned to life, withered and subdued, but once the Germans appear, he becomes more alive. Every exploded bomb dropped by the Nazi planes pumps him up some, both mentally and physically. But in the end, when the occupiers learn that they have lost the Battle of Moscow, Fayunin begins to shrink. Eventually the Soviet army arrives and liberates the town, and he returns to his mummy state. Such an evolution of the character along with the development of the historical drama gave Yomei an indelible lesson in directing.
Unlike the plays they had produced before, Invasion needed original music to create a suitable mood and aura. Two theater composers were used for that job. They also made a piano piece, to be played by Mrs. Talanov. In every way, this play demonstrated the complexity and intricacy of being a director.
Yomei was working devotedly to make the best use of her last few months before graduation.