©CIV1R M. SAYLER The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027122252 Cornell University Library PN 2724.S27R9 Russian theatre under the Revolution, 3 1924 027 122 252 THE RUSSIAN THEATRE UNDER THE REVOLUTION Sherling. Petrograd MAXIM GORKY: PROPHET OF THE REVOLUTION AND EUSSIa's GREATEST LIVING PLAYWRIGHT The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution By Oliver M. Sayler With Illustrations avMVAP-gJS Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1920 Copyright, igio. By Little, Brown, and Company. All riffiti nseraed Published, January, 1920 f^P ^(h J NotteooB yitu Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.&A. TO flSiB flSotbet WHO SPED ME COURAGEOUSLY OK MY ADVENTURE PREFACE The persistence of the theatre under the Russian Revolution is not without parallel in social and political upheavals. Paris went to the playhouse under Jacobin just as under Bourbon, under the Commune just as under the Empire or the RepubUc. The nature of the persisting theatre in Moscow and Petrograd, however, is a distinctive phenomenon of the Russian Revolution, an eloquent comment upon the inherent nature of that theatre and upon the Russian character and life. In previous times of social stress, the playhouse of pastime satisfied the public caprice. In Revolutionary Russia, the theatre of profound introspection and inspiration is the one which has persisted. The serious theatre, the theatre as an art and not a pastime or an industry, has persisted through the anxious and constraining days of the Russian upheaval because that has been its firmly established spirit for a hundred years. The fact that it has weathered the storms of the class struggle, of the Terror and of starvation proves that it is the honest expression of Russian character and illuminates the imaginative and spiritual quality of Russian life. The Russian theatre as I saw it, there- fore, during the winter of 1917-1918, the first, six months of the Bolshevik regime, was essentially the same theatre which in the last two decades has taken the leadership vii Pr^ace of the modern stage. It is my privilege, therefore, not only to present the picturesque panorama of the Russian theatre under the Revolution, but also to recount and appraise the men and the institutions and the theories which have made that theatre preeminent in our time. The Russian theatre as I observed it under the Revo- lution is not the child of Revolution but the guest. It is the theatre of the first two decades of the twentieth century, and it continues to-day not because but in spite of the social struggle. The theatre as the Revolu- tion will transform it has not yet appeared. All over Russia, under the stimulus of the new-foimd freedom of the proletariat, workmen's and peasants' theatres have sprung up, but their interest thus far is sociological rather than esthetic. Through these stages in time the theatre will extend its influence to the masses of the Russian people. From these stages and the talents they develop, new ideas, new visions may arise. But the background, the inspiration of the future theatre of Russia, will be the splendid achievement of yesterday and to-day in the playhouses of Moscow and Petrograd. For the spelling of Russian proper names I have re- jected usage in many cases, notably the French trans- literation of the personalities of the Ballet which often leads to inaccuracies of pronunciation in English. In- stead, I have attempted to indicate the Russian pro- nunciation as accurately as our alphabet will permit. In every case I have brought Russian dates into con- formity with our own calendar. A large part of the material in this volume has ap- viii Preface peared in magazine and newspaper form, and for the right to reprint I am deeply indebted to the editors of The Bookman, Vanity Fair, the Boston Evening Tran- script and The Indianapolis News. For permission to use the photograph of Balieff's production of Maxim Gorky's "Mother" at Letutchaya Muish, I am under obligations to the editor of the Russian periodical, Solntsa Rossi. Throughout my winter in the Russian theatre I had the eager and enthusiastic assistance of Giorgi and Andrei Weber, the two elder sons of my Moscow host. As interpreters of their country's speech and impulse and imagination, they served as a living link between me and my work. On my return, their place was taken in the same spirit by Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Mihailovitch Bregowsky, of Chicago, who helped me translate many of the papers and pamphlets which I had gathered. To Mr. Paul M. Taylor, of Huntington, Indiana, I am under obligations for the financial backing without which I could not have begun my mission. My debt to the artists of the Russian theatre for aid in gathering the record of their labors is too great to esti- mate or to enumerate. Without their quick and sym- pathetic understanding of my passion to report to the western world their achievements and their dreams, I would have been helpless. With that understanding, I was able easily to surmount the difficulties and the anx- ieties of life in a world aflame. Oliver M. Sayler HuNXiNOTON, Indiana, October, 1919 VS. CONTENTS CBAFTEE TAOE vii Preface I Plays within a Play II The World's First Theatre in "The Blue Bird" and Stanislavsky . IV The Plays of Tchehoff at the Art Theatre V From Turgenieff to Gorky at the Art Theatre VI The Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre Vn The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home VIII The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre IX The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt . X "Salome" in Cubist Vesture XI A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny Xn Here and There in Moscow Theatres Xni Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical . XIV Yevreynoff and Monodrama XV Russian Theories of the Theatre Index I 13 31 45 64 80 9S 119 13 s 152 163 180 202 221 24s 263 s LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Maxim Gorky, prophet of the Revolution and Russia's greatest living playwright .... Frontispiece PAGE Facade of the Moscow Art Theatre 4 The Small State Theatre, Moscow, home of the classic drama 4 The Alexandrinsky Theatre, Petrograd, with the monument to Catherine II in the foreground S Vladimir Ivanovitch Nyemirovitch-Dantchenko, President of the Direction, Moscow Art Theatre .... 22 Constantin Sergeievitch Stanislavsky, First Artist and Presi- dent of the Council, Moscow Art Theatre ... 22 Vassily Ivanovitch Katchaloff, Olga Leoncirdovna Knipper and Ivan Mihailovitch Moskvin, leading players of the Moscow Art Theatre 23 "The Blue Bird" at the Moscow Art Theatre. "The Land of Memory" and "The Farewell" . . . . .34 Nikolai Fyodorovitch Kolin, Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova and Mihail Alexandrovitch Tchehoff, nephew of the play- wright, leading players in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre 35 A scene from Act 11 of TchehofE's "The Cherry Orchard" at the Moscow Art Theatre 46 Stanislavsky in two of his favorite r61es at the Moscow Art Theatre, Gaiefi in TchehofE's "The Cherry Orchard" and Colonel Vershinin in TchehofE's "The Three Sisters" . 47 A scene in Act I of Maxim Gorky's masterpiece, "The Lower Depths", at the Moscow Art Theatre. Stanis- lavsky in the r61e of Satine sits on the table ... 66 xiii List of Illustrations PAGE A scene in Act III of Turgenieff's romantic comedy "A Month in the Country", at the Moscow Art Theatre. Stanislavsky as Rapitin and Kjiipper as Mme. Islaieva in the center 67 Caleb Hummer's toy shop in Act II of "The Cricket on the Hearth ", at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. TchehofE as Plimimer ; Solovyova as Bertha ; and Vakh- tangofE as Tackleton 84 Two scenes from "Twelfth Night" at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. Baklanova as Olivia and Suhatcheva as Viola 85 The Great State Theatre, Moscow, and the Marinsky Theatre, Petrograd, the two homes of the Russian ballet and opera 96 Anderson, Kandaourova and Gorshkova, of the ballet, Moscow 97 Mihail' Mordkin and Margarita Froman in the ballet "Aziade ", staged by Mordkin no A sketch by Korovin for a setting in the ballet "Bayaderka ", at the Great State Theatre, Moscow . . . .111 Fyodor Ivanovitch Shaliapin, Russia's greatest opera singer, and Constantin Alexeievitch Korovin, painter, in the studio of the latter, March, 1918 in Prince Alexander Ivanovitch Sumbatofi (Youzhin), Director of the Small State Theatre, Moscow . . . .122 Prince Simibatoff as Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice" 122 A scene in Act I of Griboyedofi's "The Sorrows of the Spirit ", at the Small State Theatre, Moscow . . . .123 Alexander Yakovlevitch Tairoff, Director of the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow 146 Henri Forterre, composer of the music for the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow 146 The curtain of the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow, designed by the Cubist artist, Alexandra Exter, of Kie£E . . . 147 xiv List of Illustrations Three costume designs by Alexandra Exter for the Cubist production of Oscar Wilde's "Salome" at the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow i6o Alice Giorgievna Koonen as Salome in the Cubist production of Oscar Wilde's tragedy at the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow i6i The satyrs carry ofE the menads in the bacchanale,"Thamira of the Cithern ", at the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow . . 168 A scene from Lotar's "King Harlequin ", at the Kamemy Theatre, Moscow 169 Fyodor Kommissarzhevsky, Director of the theatre in memory of his sister, the great actress, Vera Kommissar- zhevskaya 196 N. F. BaUeff, Russia's leading low comedian, and founder of Letutchaya Muish or The Bat, Moscow's super-cabaret . 196 A scene from Maxim Gorky's short play, "Mother", at BaliefE's Letutchaya Muish or The Bat, Moscow . . 197 Alexander YakOvlevitch Golovin, painter, and Vsevolod Emilyevitch Meyerhold, regisseur, in the green room of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Petrograd .... 208 Two scene designs by Golovin for Meyerhold's production of the opera, "The Stone Guest", text by Pushkin and score by Dargomuizhsky, at the Marinsky Theatre, Petrograd 209 Two portraits of Nikolai Nikolaievitch YevreynofE, play- wright, producer and proponent of monodrama . .232 A scene design by the artist, N. I. Kulbin, for Act II of the monodrama, "The Representation of Love", by Nikolai Nikolaievitch YevreynoS 233 XV THE RUSSIAN THEATRE UNDER THE REVOLUTION CHAPTER I Plays Within a Play It wasn't a promising prospect for a winter of calm consideration of the Russian theatre, as I sat one morn- ing in November, 1917, in the Yaroslavl station in Moscow on the bench which had been my couch the preceding night. Down by the Kremlin the big guns had been booming ever since my journey across Si- beria had come to an end the previous afternoon. Out on the street in front of the station the rattle of small arms rose and fell with all the realism of a well- staged western melodrama. Evidently I was to have my fill of drama in the raw and out-of-doors if not within the confines of Aristotle and the four walls of a theatre. Somewhat in the spirit of the defeated candidate who buys the cold gray newspapers tlie dawn of the morning after election, I had counted out my postage- stamp kopecks at the station news stand in pa3mient for the latest copies of The Theatrical Gazette and The Theatre and Art, weekly journalistic records re- I The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution spectively of the stages of Moscow and Petrograd. It didn't help much to turn the pages and figure out what plays I could have seen if the Bolsheviki hadn't been so prompt in starting their revolution. I could have heard Shaliapin sing in Petrograd. I could have seen " The Blue Bird " and " The Cherry Orchard " and " The Village Stepantchikovo ", a play made from untranslated Dostoievsky, at the Moscow Art Theatre. I could have seen Oscar Wilde's " Salome " in cubist dress at the Kamerny. I could have seen Mordkin dance at the Theatre of the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies. But the Soviet had decided to produce an impromptu pageant of its own in the streets of Mos- cow. And the Soviet brooks no competition! I had only myself to blame if I was not satisfied with my lot. There was no evidence in distant Ameri- ca that the Russian theatre had survived three years of war and six months of half-revolution. It had not survived significantly in orderly England or in sobered France or even in neutral New York. With us and with the western Europeans, war revealed our theatre only too clearly as a luxury, a pastime and an industry. But I thought I knew the Russians and the fundamental demand of the Russian spirit for artis- tic expression. I knew from the testimony of Gordon Craig and others that Moscow and Petrograd had carried the modern theatre to its finest achievement. And I feared that no achievement, however funda- mental, could survive indefinitely the cataclysm of the social revolution which from the start hung ominously Plays Within a Play in the offing of the political revolution. If I wished to snatch a brand from the ashes, I must go and go at once. Yet, with all this faith, there were times on the long journey the wrong way round the world when I mistrusted my mission. After I had confided it to a few fellow travelers and had wilted under their dubi- ous gaze, I decided to keep my own counsel and con- serve my confidence. Reassurance came after I had burned my bridges behind me. " The Russian theatres ? Certainly they are running," said my cabin companion on the bob-tailed little Japanese craft which carried me from Tsuruga to Vladivostok. He was a Russian engineer, homeward bound. " You may be disappointed in them," he said, with the self-abasement of the Slav. " Stanislavsky has carried realism to its pole at the Art Theatre in Moscow, and Meyerhold has developed theatricality to the opposite extreme in Petrograd, and neither has created anything really new in the theatre." Still, to perfect the old was something, and, besides, what the theatre needs is not so much something new as a re- discovery of the old. During a bloody week of violent civil strife and an- other week of nervous uncertainty after Kerensky's forces in the Kremlin had capitulated, the prospect of studying the Russian theatre was dark enough. There were other problems to solve, such as the question of a roof and sustenance, but each day I watched the hoardings and the bulletin boards on the doors of the Art Theatre for an announcement of reopening. Life 3 %r •*»••> Ipm -y x*^llt» Photograph by the Author THE ALEXANDKINSKY THEATRE, PETROGKAD, WITH THE MONU- MENT TO CATHERINE II IN THE FOREGROUND Plays Within a Play Nor "The Lower Depths" of Gorky the following Sunday afternoon. Stanislavsky would not play his role of Satine. But he would on toward the holidays. " The Cherry Orchard " of Tchehoff that evening, if I liked. He would be in the cast then. And so it went through another hour or two of the most gra- cious attention, while I should have been scouting for the ghost of a Thanksgiving dinner in the restaurants of Moscow. But the day had justified its name ! To sketch sharply the astonishing picture of the Russian theatre under the Revolution, I know of no better way than to tabulate the range of choice in the repertory of the Moscow theatres that first day af- ter their enforced vacation : At the Art Theatre, " The Blue Bird " and " The Three Sisters." At the Great State Theatre, the home of the opera and the ballet, " Aida." At the Small State Theatre, the home of the classic drama, Griboyedoff 's " Gore ot Uma ", a title which defies translation but which I like to paraphrase as " The Sorrows of the Spirit." At the Kamerny, a passionate tragedy of the Persian hinterland, " The Azure Carpet " by Liuboflf Stolitsa. At Kommissar- zhevsky's Theatre, " The Comedy of Alexei " by Kuz- min and " Requiem " by Andreiefif. At the Theatre of the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies, once the Zimina Opera, " La Boheme " and Taneyeff's " Orestes." At the Theatre Korsha, Tolstoy's terrifying picture of the Russian peasant, " The Power of Darkness." At the Moscow Dramatic Theatre, Merezhkovsky's " Paul I." And at the super-variety of Balieff, Letutchaya Muish S The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution or The Bat, Gogol's " Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Niki- forovitch " among many other sketches and interludes. This, it might be supposed, was a holiday repertory, a thank ofifering for the return of civil peace if not in honor of the proletarian victors. Not so. Any day throughout the rest of the winter, except on the relig- ious holidays when all the theatres and shops were closed, a similar range of choice was possible. Some- times the titles were not so familiar to a foreigner, sometimes more so. For Shakespeare and Dickens and Wilde as well as the better known Russian pla)nvrights w«re freely represented. On through the great demon- strations for and against the Government, on through the days of the German advance and the Peace Con- gress, the theatre held to its course, — the most normal of all the Russian institutions, the only one to reflect any of the glory of the elder days. On it went, undis- turbed, through pillage and murder and anarchy. From November to March, in the course of eighty-seven visits to the Russian theatre, I never went home after the final curtain a single night in either Moscow or Petro- grad without hearing firing across the city or just around the corner. Late in January while the snow in Theatre Place two blocks away was stained scarlet with blood, I sat in the Art Theatre. The play was Gorky's "The Lower Deptlis." All the great ones, Stanislavsky and Katchaloff and the rest, were in the cast. The performance was the most terribly moving of my whole winter in the Russian theatre. Along with the other hundreds in that crowded playhouse, 6 Plays Within a Play my body was torn with hunger and my soul flayed with sickness and pity and despair. Yet there we sat, will- ingly, eagerly, plunging the knife of spiritual torture still deeper in the wound. Sometimes I think that is the surest explanation why the Russian theatre has persisted through the days of anxiety and the Terror. Out of their sorrows the Russians have builded all their art. And in the days of their profoundest gloom, they return to it for the consolation which nothing else affords. To the Russian, the theatre is not a refuge for idle amusement. Even in the piping times before the war — and what a life it must have been then in Moscow ! — the typical form of lighter mummery had the thrust of intellect and the stimulus of wit to lift it from an- imal inanity. Baliefif, at Letutchaya Muish, poked his addled smile and then his pudgy body through the cur- tains between the numbers of his variety programme, and for five or fifteen minutes sparred with any one who dared risk the game in lightning flashes of give and take. Baliefif still sparred after the Revolution, although most of his imitators straggled on the edge of failure and one by one closed their doors. Even he has had to fight against insuperable odds. It is not easy to smile and play with words while the world is toppling. The Russian theatre has persisted, therefore, not be- cause it is a relief from life, an underground retreat where one could escape the agonies and the duties and the burdens of life. To the Russian, the theatre is The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution rather a microcosmos, a concentration and an expla- nation of life. If life can not be explained, at least its inexplicability can be faced. And that way lies resig- nation and peace for a time. And so it is that the sober stages — the Art Theatre, the Opera and the Ballet, the Small State Theatre with its classic repertory — have survived the tribulations of social chaos while the lighter and the experimental theatres have found the struggle almost hopeless. Seats are sold out at the Art Theatre days in advance. In fact, you have to stand in line for a number and then return to find out whether yours has been drawn as one of the lucky numbers entitling the holder to buy seats. Tickets to the masterpieces of Tchaikovsky and Glinka at the Great State Theatre bring prices under the canopy just before the curtain that would make spec- ulators in Caruso coupons envious. Just ahead may lie the complete break-up of life and of this last rem- nant of the elder life. But while it endures, the Rus- sian is determined to drink deep of its spiritual draught. Day by day against forbidding odds I gathered to- gether the fragments of this strange panorama of plays within the vaster play of the Revolution. My own problem was to stick to my task, although the mad drama of the headlong course of human events beck- oned me to drop my tools and sit spellbound, watching the three and thirty rings of its sardonic circus. Never, however, was this vaster spectacle quite out of my range of vision. The problem of food and shelter and comparative safety linked me intimately with its 8 Plays Within a Play grim aspects. Always it crept unbidden into the fore- ground, coloring and heightening and illuminating the particular phase of the scene I had set myself to study. Far more distracting than this temptation was the dilatory nature of the Russian. When he starts on a task there is no one in the world more intense than the Muscovite. He burns himself up at it. Nothing else exists for him until it is finished. Once it is done, though, he is not interested in preserving the record or in recalling it from the past. The doors of every theatre in Russia opened wide for me when my errand became known. Again and again I presented myself at the Art Theatre five minutes before the cur- tain. And although the house had been sold out for days, a seat was found for me. But when I asked for the facts, the records of the past, the prospects for the future, the photographs with which to illustrate my experiences, I was politely put off until to-morrow. And with the Russian as with the Mexican, to-morrow never becomes to-day. Perhaps it was this almost in- superable obstacle which led one of our American critics to declare, while a correspondent in Russia, that the task of gathering the record of the Russian theatre was a hopeless one. It was not hopeless, perhaps, but it was far from hopeful. No Russian, so far as I could discover, has ever tried to surmount its diffi- culties. The calendar of my disappointments looms large in my journal. Day after day I dogged the trail of Tai- roff and Forterre, Stanislavsky and Kommissarzhevsky 9 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution and Sumbatoff. I begged and I pleaded. One night at the Kamerny I feigned anger and the ruse neatly succeeded. There was a hurried consultation and Tairoff rushed up, caught me in his arms and smiled, — and promised once more. Little by little I gathered my data, sometimes, I think, without their realizing it. If it had been a lesser record, I woidd have given up in despair long before it was finished. From November, 1917, until February, 1918, Mos- cow held me in its fascinating grip. Each week when I thought I had completed the repertory of the leading theatres, new plays were thrust into the schedules from inexhaustible storehouses. There have been few new productions in the Russian theatres since the Revolu- tion. The cost has been forbidding under the strait- ened circumstances. And so the best of the old has been drawn forth to keep the programmes full. At last in February I tore myself away for a desper- ate trip to Petrograd in the face of the German ad- vance. The embassies were packed to leave. I was advised to take the next train out myself. " But I have just arrived," I protested. Meyerhold, the eager regisseur of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, and good gray Golovin, the artist who paints his scenery, saw my point, urged me to stay, and promised to keep me in hiding for two years if necessary, in case the Germans should come ! With the exception of the Alexandrinsky and the Marinsky, the two state-endowed homes of the drama and the opera, and one or two experimental theatres 10 Plays Within a Play such as Yevreynoff's Crooked Looking-Glass, the stages of the capital were never so important as those of Moscow. And even these had suffered from the strictures of revolution more seriously than the Mos- cow theatres, just as every phase of life in Petrograd was more bitter and desperate than in Moscow. Still, the spirit was the same. Witness, for instance, the list from which I had to choose the night in February be- fore the embassies fled for the morasses of Finland or the salubrious peace of Vologda: At the Marinsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff's opera, " Snyegurotchka." At the Alexandrinsky, one of the masterpieces of Ostrovsky, " The Thunderstorm." At the Mihailovsky, Euripides' " Hippolyte," with scenery by Bakst. At the Narodny Dom, the huge auditorium where opera is given at nominal prices, " Yevgeny Onyegin ", the masterpiece of Tchaikovsky and Push- kin. In the Dramatic Hall of the Narodny Dom, " The Days of Our Life ", one of the earlier plays of Andreieff. At the Workers' Theatre, another play by Andreieff, " Sawa." At the Crooked Looking-Glass, Schnitzler's " The Merry-go-round." At the Musical Drama, "Carmen." At the Theatre Saburova, Mau- rice Donnay's " The Education of a Prince." At the Liteiny, Ibsen's " Ghosts." At the Theatre Nezlobina, Merezhkovsky's " Paul I." And at the Workshop Theatre, Maeterlinck's " The Miracle of St. Anthony." A remarkable repertory for the theatres of a city of order and peace. But for Petrograd ! Players and audience alike, hungry and harassed by the Terror. II The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution And the Germans a few hours' railroad journey distant and still surging onward. It was incredible! Arriazing as it was, Petrograd was not the place to study the Russian theatre. It lacked the detachment, the aloofness of Moscow. The air of intense uncer- tainty made life too dynamic for contemplation. Be- sides, I had considerable material to gather together in Moscow and gaps in my records to fill, and so after two weeks I returned to the city of the Kremlin. An- other fortnight there, and I was ready to start on the long trail home. The theatres had practically completed their season. There would be performances in alter- nating weeks through Lent, but no new productions or revivals. The way out was becoming more difficult daily. Finland was closed and Vladivostok was sev- eral times as far distant as it had been in the previous autumn. To bring back my records in safety was worth more than another glimpse or two of the de- fiantly beautiful theatre of Russia, kept alive by the dauntless courage of her artists. When I hark back to the memories of that theatre and then consider the state of our own in wartime and after, safe and snug and trivial, across the world from the firing line and the social maelstrom, I am in no mood to make excuses for the Russian. His State is on the rocks through the fault of — well, who shall say whose was the fault ? At any rate, though Russia has lost her patrimony for awhile, she has not lost her soul ! 12 CHAPTER II The World^s First Theatre CoNSTANTiN Sergeievitch Alexeieff reached out a large warm hand and his furrowed face broke into a cordial smile, as my Moscow host, himself a man of fine tastes and keen pride in the Russian theatre, started to introduce me in the little dressing room to the rear of the stage of the Art Theatre. My letters had preceded me, — letters telling how I had come all the way from America into the shadow of the Terror just to sit in the playhouses of Moscow and Petrograd and carry back to my own country a brand of inspira- tion from their defiant beauty. As the name in the letters and the name from the lips of my host flashed their identity across the mind of the artist, I felt the thrill of suddenly increased pressure on my hand, the smile vanished from his face and tears came into his eyes. For seventeen thousand miles I had persisted on my errand, relying on my own faith, a blind faith which I could hardly analyze. Now I w;as face to face with an answering faith. I knew why I had come, and the knowledge of my responsibility almost overwhelmed me. It was thus that I met Stanislavsky, president of the 13 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution council and first artist of the world's first theatre. Alexeieff he is in life, but all Russia and the world know* him by his stage name, Stanislavsky. All Rus- sia knows him, and his name and his influence are written all over the record of the Russian theatre of the last two decades. Under the iron-gray soldierly guise of Vershinin, the reserved but sensitive lieutenant colonel in Tche- hofif's " The Three Sisters ", I first saw him that even- ing of the day the theatre reopened after the Bolshe- vik Revolution. In the afternoon " The Blue Bird " had cast its spell over me and I had yielded to Stanis- lavsky, producer, — the master artist of the active modern theatre. Maeterlinck's f eerie had stood forth for the first time as its creator had intended, simply but richly, without the sentimental trappings of the western productions. Now it was Stanislavsky, actor, to whom I had surrendered, an actor distin- guished for poise, for subtlety of shadings and for keenness of intellect, but above all for the beauty of his spirit. Five days later I visited him again in his dressing room to discuss my plans, and this time I sat in the presence of the genial, easy-going, middle-aged Gaieff of TchehofJ's " The Cherry Orchard." The call bell rang before we had finished and so I returned after the final curtain. At the mirror sat a man with silver hair. I must be in the wrong room! By this time my host had caught up with me at the door and turned me back into the room, — to face Stanislavsky after 14 The World's First Theatre all, Stanislavsky the man. At the age of fifty-five his hair is white. But that is the only sign of years. His huge square frame is vigorous and alert, his eye keen and kindly, his grasp of detail and his capacity for work thoroughly un-Russian. I believe he is the busiest man in Moscow, not excepting even the tireless People's Kommissars. At least, he is the hardest man in the city to find. Not so hard, though, if you are as persistent in your task as he is in his! But in spite of this refusal to " let down " like the majority of his countrymen and most foreigners who live long in Rus- sia, Stanislavsky is splendidly Russian. I don't know why I had expected to find in him more of the man of the world, speaking English, perhaps, and surely French fluently and possessed of the confidence and authority to which his position entitled him. I don't know, unless it is because for so long he and he alone has personified outside of Russia the world's first the- atre. On the contrary, he speaks with difficulty when he leaves his native tongue. His heart and soul are in Russia and in his work. Transplant him, as you could a man of the world, and he would perish. Most of all is he Russian in the gentleness and simplicity of his ways, in the beauty of spirit which inheres alike in the artist and the man. Once more I saw him in his dressing room, this time as Satine, the strange groping soul in Maxim Gorky's masterpiece, "The Lower Depths", who, stung by the tragedies of that dim underworld, rises from his planks and flings out a flaming declaration 15 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution of his belief in life. In this face none of the quiet dignity of Vershinin, none of the placid sensitiveness of Gaieff. Instead, the smouldering terror of the lost soul who refuses to admit that he is lost, the defiant glint of the eye, the nervous twitching of the mouth standing out from the frame of tattered beard and hair. I could not avoid the feeling that here was Satine himself, the Satine I had seen from my seat in the auditorium, although this Satine was telling me what I should see in the Studio playhouses of the Art Theatre and was calling in the young men in charge of them to introduce them to me. Such is the persuasive mastery of the craft of make-up which the Russian has achieved. At the Art Theatre, this natural gift is applied with even more startling exactness than in the other playhouses of Moscow, for the practical absence of footlights permits the actors to dispense with all exaggeration and assume the semblance of life. Several other times I met Constantin Sergeitch, in the theatre or at the Studios, those lusty children of the parent institution which will keep it always young and which their founder loves, I am sure, even more fondly than the Art Theatre itself. Toward the end of the winter he was seriously ill, and I continued my research through Vladimir Ivanovitch Nyemirovitch- Dantchenko, the business brains of the Art Theatre; Rumiantseff, the house manager; Berthenson, the new stage manager from the Alexandrinsky in Petrograd, and Lazarieff, a gracious member of the company i6 The World's First Theatre entrusted to me as a kind of diplomatic plenipoten- tiary. Still, it is Stanislavsky who personifies the Moscow Art Theatre to me. I like most to remember him as I saw him the afternoon of the dress rehearsal of " Twelfth Night " at the First Studio. Here were his pupils, his children, ready to reveal the product of their patient labors to their master and to the assem- bled pillars of the Moscow stage. All of the pillars were there — hale and hearty Prince Sumbatofif, re- gent of the Small State Theatre, the home of classic drama; Pravdin, his most distinguished actor; Ander- son, the bewitching blonde inheritor of Pavlova's laurels in the ballet; Gzovskaya, once of the Art The- atre and at that time in Sumbatoff's ranks, and many others. On the front row of the tiny improvised auditorium, a seat or two to my right, sat Stanislavsky with pencil and paper in hand to note the transgres- sions of his flock. These implements, though, were soon forgotten and a broad smile of pride mingled wjith unaffected and unashamed pleasure spread over his face as these eager candidates for the Art Theatre ranks romped their way through the heartiest, the most truly Elizabethan performance of " Twelfth Night " I have ever seen. Stanislavsky and Nyemirovitch-Dantchenko ; the eighteen-hour session between the actor and the busi- ness man in a Moscow cafe on June 4, 1897, when the foundations of the theatre were agreed upon; the end- lessly patient preparation of its productions; Tchehoff and his plays, " The Sea Gull " and " The Three Sis- 17 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution ters" and "The Cherry Orchard " — these are the facts and the personalities by which the Moscow Art Theatre is known in America. They are saUent facts but they are not the only facts, and it may be well both for us and for Russia to know a few more of the facts about this first of the world's theatres. You would never suspect the intentions of the inte- rior of the Art Theatre from its businesslike fa9ade in Kamergersky Pereulok, a little over two squares from the great open Theatre Place of Moscow. Once it was a business block, and shops still occupy the street- floor front. Inside, however, its architectural ances- try is soon forgotten, for the transformation has been thorough. The Art Theatre has one of the most sat- isfactory auditoriums of the world's playhouses, — a severe but comfortable and quiet enclosure in browns, with wood panelling in place of the traditional stucco and with three floors, each opening by way of spacious corridors into tempting foyers and restaurant and smoking and trophy rooms. Beyond the public gaze, however, there is a pitiful lack of elbow space. The costume accumulations of twenty years are stowed in two small rooms up under the roof. The scenery has overflowed into all the vacant buildings and lofts open- ing on the great courtyard at the rear of the theatre. The dilapidated stagecoach used in the first act of the Dostoievsky play, " The Village Stepantchikovo ", is pitched out anywhere in this courtyard between per- formances, and it is becoming more realistic every week ! The Art Theatre is looking forward to a new i8 The World's First Theatre building some day, — the world's first playhouse for the world's first theatre. But there will have to be a new Russia before the Art Theatre has a new home ! How a sober, serious institution such as this has been able to survive the strain of three years of war and nearly two years of profound social upheaval is a mystery explicable only by an understanding of Rus- sian character. In the previous chapter I have ex- plained the dogged persistence of art, and the theatre in particular, by the fact that the Russian has built his deepest feelings into his art, and to these purging experiences he returns when life becomes too heavy to endure. The ability of the Moscow Art Theatre to preserve the astonishing perfection of its former days under almost insuperable handicaps is due also to its marvelously efficient and compact organization. The Art Theatre is an institution. It has its own home, its own company, its own clientele, its own faith- fully built past, its own carefully analyzed future. Each year it has a budget which faces facts as relent- lessly as the budget of a bank or an insurance cor- poration. It knows by experience that as long as the citizens of Moscow walk that city's cobble streets they will buy all of the tickets offered for sale at its box office. The only error in its calculations during the winter of 1917-1918 lay in the deficit due to the closing of the theatre during the Bol- shevik Revolution. The theatre is incorporated as a cooperative body after the manner of corporate in- stitutions throughout the world. Every one connected 19 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution with the theatre draws his individual salary, whether he^is a member of the cooperative society or not. The purpose of that society is to apply the profits and other sums which may be received, first of all to the upbuilding of the theatre as a permanent institution, and afterwards to the members in proportion to their stock holdings and their salaries. The opportunity to share in the management of the institution into which they have poured their lives and also in its financial returns has induced most of the leading members of the company to join the corporatiwij Loyalty and affection for Stanislavsky binds every one connected with the theatre to his work, but the cooperative organ- ization makes that loyalty intensely practical. When- ever I came back to its brown curtains with the sea-gull device worked on them, after I had made a round of the other playhouses of Moscow, I felt ashamed for doubting its preeminence. There was no authority or order at the Great State Theatre, the home of opera and ballet. There was utter disorder and confusion at the Theatre of the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies. But at the Art Theatre every one ticked out his tasks like the wheels of a great clock. Often there was more than one at hand to meet emergencies as they arose. Under the charter, the operation of the theatre is divided between the Council and the Direction. The Council decides what plays shall be produced, who shall design the scenery, who shall write the necessary music, who shall supervise the production and who shall play the various roles. Its tasks lie behind the 20 The World's First Theatre curtain. Stanislavsky, of course, is at its head, and its other members include many of the ablest actors in the company: Gribunin, Katchaloff, Massalitinoff, Moskvin, Stahovitch, Sushkyevitch and Gaidaroff. The Direction, on the other hand, engages itself to carry out the behests of the Council. It undertakes and meets the financial and the business obligations of the theatre and at its head is Moscow's Maecenas, Vladimir Ivanovitch Nyemirovitch-Dantchenko, who is assisted by Alexandroff and the manager of the house, Rumiantsefif. From the first hours of the Art The- atre, Vladimir Ivanovitch has stood by the side of Stanislavsky, helping by shrewd practical advice and by lavish use of his private fortune to guide the insti- tution to an independent basis. It has been his acute business sense which has carried the Art Theatre safely through the trying days of war and revolution. He, too, is well on toward sixty years, but although his mind and his manner are still almost as young as those of his coadjutor, he carries the air of a man of affairs. If you caught a glimpse of him at Monte Carlo or at Capri, you might mistake him for a Russian Grand Duke traveling incognito to escape a Bolshevik doom. It is no wonder, then, that the Art Theatre has been able to attract to its ranks and hold many of the fore- most actors of the Russian stage. The more impor- tant members of the company number at least fifty, while the pupils of the Studio theatres, who are often called to the parent stage to play minor roles, will double that total. The company is especially strong 21 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution in its men. Six of them in addition to Stanislavsky are artists of the first rank. Any one of the seven would be acknowledged leader of our stage if his gifts could be transferred and made intelligible in our the- atres. Chief among the men after Stanislavsky is Vassily Ivanovitch Katchaloff, an actor of keen mind, fine imagination and impressive presence, equalled only by Mansfield in his prime or Coquelin. He is as much at home in the role of the suave Don Juan in Push- kin's " The Stone Guest " as he is in that of the tat- tered Baron in Gorky's' " The Lower Depths." No one in the Russian theatre can say " If you please " with more urbanity than Katchaloff. It was he who played Hamlet in the much-discussed production of the tragedy for which Gordon Craig designed the scenery in 1912. Equally important in the Art The- atre ensemble is the versatile Ivan Mihailovitch Mosk- vin, Russia's and, I think, the world's greatest living high comedian. In a season you may see him in roles ranging all the way from the unctuous match-making country doctor in TurgeniefiF's " A Month in the Coun- try " to the tragic figure of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovitch in Count Alexei Tolstoy's historical play of the same name. I thought at first that the Russians did not appreciate Moskvin and his subtle, pointed humor. They did not pay audible tribute as we would. But after a while I discovered that they cherished Moskvin as a supreme artist instead of a mere entertainer. Our stage has probably never known a character actor of the breadth and range of Luzhsky. And the 22 / < tf as 5 S The World's First Theatre brusque Gribunin, the sturdy Vishnevsky and the earnest Massalitinoff have only slightly less surprising gifts. First of the actresses at the Art Theatre is Olga Leonardovna Knipper, widow of the beloved play- wright, Anton Tchehoff, who wrote the leading roles in his plays for her and whom she married four years before his death in 1904. Through her, the Tchehofif tradition lives on unbroken, and when in " The Three Sisters " and " The Cherry Orchard " she appears opposite Stanislavsky, the modern theatre reaches the height of its eloquence and its beauty in the realm of realistic drama. Mme. Knipper is still in her prime and she probably plays the role of Liuboff Ranevskaya, owner of the Cherry Orchard, more convincingly than she did in 1904, although as Masha she looks like the eldest instead of the middle of the three sisters. Her scope and her powers are more nearly similar to those of Mrs. Fiske than of any one else in the American theatre. The Art Theatre is weaker, comparatively, in its women. And yet, besides Mme. Knipper, there are others, many others, gifted and intelligent far beyond our own players : Maria Petrovna Lilina, the wife of Stanislavsky, crisp and penetrating and ingratiating; Nadiezhda Butova, powerful in her reserve; Maria Germanova, stunning and commanding in her dark fascination; and Maria Zhdanova, very young and very promising, charming and wistful and light as a feather in her touch. 23 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolutfon To these in time will be added the graduates from the Studio theatres, young players who under the quick sympathy and the rigorous discipline of Stanis- lavsky are mooring themselves firmly in their art. Occasionally you will hear some one in Moscow ask who will take the place of this player or that in future years, who will play a certain cherished role. Pos- sibly no one. Surely no one has been found to follow the mourned Artyom, the inimitable creator of strange old men, who died in the first year of the war. But there will be other plays and other roles for the younger generation. Already the Studios have cast up the flaming genius of Kolin. Up from the Studios, too, have come the antic Smuishlyaieflf ; the tender and morose Tchehoff, nephew of the playwright; and the impassioned Baklanova, a wholly new kind of genius for the Art Theatre. The world's first theatre ? By what right ? By right of its extraordinary personnel? Partly. By right of its imposing and notable repertory? Partly that, too. In twenty years, four of them years of war and deso- lation, the Moscow Art Theatre has made sixty-one productions — seventy-one plays in all. Of the sixty- one, Russia has provided the plays for thirty-six of the productions. The entire course of Russian dra- matic literature has yielded up its treasures, from Pushkin and Gogol and Griboyedoff and Ostrovsky down through the Tolstoys and Turgenieff and Dostoievsky to Tchehoff and Andreieff and Gorky. With a fine catholicity of taste as well as a loyalty to 24 The World's First Theatre her native writers, foreign dramatists were sought for twenty-five of the productions : Sophocles and Shake- speare, MoHere and Goldoni, Maeterlinck and Haupt- mann, Ibsen and Hamsun. The Russian respect for Ibsen is revealed in the fact that nine of these twenty- five productions were of his plays. Almost the entire acting canon of the great Norwegian, with the excep- tion of " A Doll's House ", " The Lady from the Sea " and " John Gabriel Borkman ", has been played on the stage of the Art Theatre. Nothing tells so compactly the story of the Moscow Art Theatre as the growth of its repertory year by year. Plays have often been held over from season to season or revived, but it is the new productions which are significant. Between the lines, too, runs the course of Russian history, with bare spots to mark the Great War and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. I present it, therefore, in full, letting its eloquent impli- cations and connotations speak for themselves : Season of 1898-1899 : " Tsar Fyodor Ivanovitch ", Count Alexei Tolstoy ; " They Who Take the Law into Their Hands ", Pisemsky ; " The Sunken Bell ", Hauptmann; "The Merchant of Venice", Shake- speare; " The Hostess of the Inn " and " The Happi- ness of Greta ", Goldoni ; " The Sea Gull ", Tchehoff ; " Antigone ", Sophocles; " Hedda Gabler ", Ibsen. Season of 1899-1900 : " The Death of Ivan the Ter- rible", Count Alexei Tolstoy; "Twelfth Night", Shakespeare ; " Drayman Henschel ", Hauptmann ; "Uncle Vanya", Tchehoff; "Lonely Lives", Haupt- mann, 25 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution Season of 1900-1901 : " The Snow Maiden ", Os- trovsky; " An Enemy of the People ", Ibsen; " When We Dead Awaken", Ibsen; "The Three Sisters", Tchehoff. Season of 1901-1902: "The Wild Duck", Ibsen; " In Dream Land ", Nyemirovitch-Dantchenko ; " Michael Kramer ", Hauptmann. Season of 1902-1903: "Smug Citizens", Gorky; " The Power of Darkness ", Count Lyoff Tolstoy ; " The Lower Depths ", Gorky; " Pillars of Society ", Ibsen. Season of 1903-1904: "Julius Caesar", Shake- speare; " The Cherry Orchard ", Tchehoff. Season of 1904-1905 : Three Short Plays, Maeter- linck; " Ivanoff ", Tchehoff; " At the Monastery " and "Miniatures", Yartseff, Tchehoff and Tchirikoff; " The Prodigal Son " and " Ivan Mironitch ", Naide- noff; "Ghosts", Ibsen. Season of 1905-1906: "Children of the Sun", Gorky. Season of 1906-1907: "The Sorrows of the Spirit", Griboyedoff; "Brand", Ibsen; "The Drama of Life ", Hamsun; " The Walls ", Naidenoff. Season of 1907-1908: "Boris Godunoff", Push- kin; "The Life of Man", Andreieff; " Rosmers- holm ", Ibsen. Season of 1908-1909 : " The Blue Bird ", Maeter- linck ; " The Inspector General ", Gogol ; " At the Tsar's Door ", Hamsun. Season of 1909-1910: "Anathema", Andreieff; 26 The World's First Theatre "A Month in the Country", Turgenieff; "Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man ", Ostrovsky. Season of 1910-1911: "The Brothers Karama- zoff ", Dostoievsky; " Miserere ", Youshkyevitch ; " In the Claws of Life ", Hamsun. Season of 1911-1912 : " The Living Corpse ", Count Lyoff Tolstoy; " Hamlet", Shakespeare; Three Short Plays, Turgenieff. Season of 1912-1913: "Peer Gynt", Ibsen; "Ye- katerina Ivanovna ", Andreieff; " Le Malade Imagi- naire ", Moliere. Season of 1913-1914: "Nikolai Stavrogin", Dos- toievsky; " Thought ", Andreieff. Season of 1914-1915: "The Death of Pazuhin", Saltuikoff-Shchedrin; "Autumn Viohns", Surgu- tchoff; Three Short Plays, Pushkin. Season of 1915-1916; "There Will Be Joy", Me- rezhkovsky. Season of 1916-1917 : No new productions. Season of 1917-1918: "The Village Stepantchi- kovo ", Dostoievsky. The supremacy of the Moscow Art Theatre, how- ever, lies more securely in its perfection and thorough application of a dramatic principle, the principle of realism. The fact that it has reached the end of its tether, that it is simply applying this principle all over again with each new play which it produces, has served latterly to rouse the charge that it has fulfilled its pur- pose, that it has had its day. From its earliest years, the adherence of Stanislavsky to the belief in realism 27 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution as an art method has borne the brunt of bitter attack. Meyerhold quarrelled first within the company and then, leaving it, he has spent the last ten years in attacking the theories of the Art Theatre and in mak- ing productions as utterly different as the theatre will permit. Alice Koonen, trained under Stanislavsky and the first of the Mytyls in "The Blue Bird", has seceded and with Alexander Tairoff has founded the experimental Kamemy Theatre. Kommissarzhevsky has fought the good gray leader with dialectic and with experiment. But the Art Theatre goes on its way regardless of the epithets dragged from the dictionary to be hurled at it. Once in a while Stanislavsky leaves his chosen path for an experiment of his own, such as the highly imaginative and symbolic production of " The Blue Bird." Or he invites Gordon Craig to come to Moscow to set " Hamlet " on his stage. Even Craig, uncompromising as he is against realism, admits that if you are determined to have realism in your theatre you must go to school to Stanislavsky. And those who have lost interest in the Art Theatre and who have turned their attention to the newer experi- mental stages, confess that no study of the modem theatre is complete without Stanislavsky. By the mere lapse of time, the Moscow Art Theatre, a revo- lutionist in 1900, has become conservative. It has settled into a tradition. The key to the Art Theatre's attainment of realis- tic appearance, it seems to me, is its stark sincerity and its use of a certain minimization. Some of the minor 28 The World's First Theatre ' customs of the theatre have played their part. No applause is permitted, even at the act ends or after the final curtain. The more democratic audiences of the theatre under the Revolution have often sought to show their approval in this customary manner, but they have been promptly hushed and the tradition has prevailed. Conjointly, there are no curtain calls, no chimes to announce the rise of the curtain, no music between the acts. The impression of a series of cross sections of life is carried out without the slightest artificial restriction. The final achievement of the Art Theatre, however, is not mere realism, not realism alone brought to a startling mechanical perfection in its representation of life. Rather, it is a spirituahzed realism, a use of the realistic form as a means and not an end, a means to the more vivid interpretation of life. Obviously, realism can not be spiritualized except by artists, supreme artists. And therein, I think, lies the claim of the Art Theatre to the leadership of the world. Out of Russia to-day there comes< no word but sor- row. Are the theatres still fulfilling their task of purging the Russian soul in its days of deepest an- guish? Has Stanislavsky satisfied himself with all the details of " The Rose and the Cross ", the new poetic drama by Alexander Blok which was in rehearsal long before I left Russia? And has it been brought to birth in the blood of the Terror? Have they revived " The Sea Gull " as they hoped to do for its twentieth anniversary? Have they been able to carry out their 29 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution plan to produce Tolstoy's " The Light That Shines in Darkness ", a light in a darkness greater than even Tolstoy ever dreamed ? I do not know. All I know is that if there yet remains any gleam of the elder life, that shrine in Kamergersky Pereulok nurtures it. All I know is that the world's first theatre will not, must not perish from the earth 1 30 CHAPTER III " The Blue Bird " and Stanislavsky When you have traveled three quarters of the way around a world at war, risking the dangers of revolu- tion and anarchy, and uncertain, except for a blind faith, whether or not you would find your goal still in existence, and when, after months of patient prepara- tion and still more patient pilgrimage, you find your- self in the presence of that which you had sought, then you come as near to the humbleness of the prophets who saw visions of old as any man is likely to come to-day. Months have passed and yet somehow I am still too near to that December afternoon when the Moscow Art Theatre resumed its season, too near to those hours when " The Blue Bird " unfolded its fairy panorama to write dispassionately of them. I can not tell surely whether it was the arrival at the shrine or the over- whelming beauty of the production of Maeterlinck's f eerie which brought the tears to my eyes and sobered and chastened and then lightened my spirit. Only this I know : I have seen " The Blue Bird " twice and again after that first afternoon and its simple beauty was even more profoundly affecting. 31 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution The man to whom, more than to any one else, the Moscow Art Theatre owes its preeminence in the world to-day is also directly and personally responsible for the bounties of " The Blue Bird." The programme in the afternoon had carried the name of Stanislavsky as postanovka or producer. Further proof came that evening when I was in his dressing room between the acts of " The Three Sisters." I asked him eagerly for photographs of the scenes of " The Blue Bird " or else for the original designs of the scenic artist so that I might have them copied. I thought I had seen the latter reproduced in Jacques Rouche's " L'Art Theatral Modern." The photographs, I was told, were not available — except those of the players themselves — for the original negatives had been made by Fischer, a German, and had been destroyed in the pogrom at the beginning of the war in 1914. And in the difficult times Russia has undergone since then, no others have been made. When I pressed my point and asked about the original designs, the firm, square but kindly face of my host carried a passing glance of embarrassed mod- esty and then admitted that there were no designs. He had conceived them himself and had personally directed the artist, V. E. Yegoroflf, in the execution of the settings. And Monsieur Rouche, sitting where I was sitting, some time before the war, had made his own sketches from the photographs which were no longer extant. Before I left Moscow, however, I found some sketches by an unnamed artist which con- vey roughly the impression of the stage pictures. 32 The Blue Bird" and Stanislavsky Ten days before the theatre reopened I had found my way to the office through a side door and there I had arranged my schedule for the first two weeks. I did not penetrate farther into the building, however, for I wished to see it for the first time under the lights and in the expectation that always and forever lurks in every theatre before the play begins. The same door, though, carried me farther at noon on the ap- pointed day, for Moscow matinees are early. And before I knew it — the theatre is so perfect a unity — I had passed through several corridors and on into the simple and restful auditorium and to my seat in the wide transverse aisle a third of the way back from the stage. In the ten seasons since " The Blue Bird " was pre- sented for the first time in the world on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre, nearly three years in advance of its first performance in Paris, the original produc- tion has been repeated two hundred and seventy times. It is, therefore, one of the most substantial and familiar members of the Art Theatre repertory, for even some of the best known of the Tchehoff plays can not point to such a record. And in that time the interpretation probably has not varied any more than it does in the course of the half dozen performances a month, for with the extensive company of the Art Theatre there are several players for many of the roles. Two im- portant omissions have been made since the early days of the play's history, — the fifth tableau, the second scene of the third act, in the forest; and the seventh 33 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution tableau, the second scene in the fourth act, the ceme- tery. These two scenes, Stanislavsky told me, had frightened the children; and inasmuch as "The Blue Bird " was intended primarily for them and is practi- cally always played at matinees for their benefit, they were left out in spite of the fact that the scene in the cemetery was one of the most characteristically Russian in the entire production. As it is now presented at the Art Theatre, " The Blue Bird " is in five acts, instead of the pla)rwright's original six, and seven scenes instead of the twelve Maeterlinck wrote. The first act is at the home of the woodcutter; the second at the Fairy's Palace and in the Land of Memory ; the third in the Palace of Night ; the fourth in the Kingdom of the Future ; and the last the Farewell and the Awakening. Three other scenes from the original manuscript, therefore, were never included — the one in the Palace of the Joys and two before the curtain. Even to-day the performance runs something over four hours. For prelude to a glimpse of " The Blue Bird " as it is set forth on the stage of the Art Theatre, I can think of nothing that will disclose the guiding purpose of that embodiment and unlock the secret of its simple spirit- ual power so well as these lines from Stanislavsky's ad- dress to the players just before they began the work of study and rehearsal : " The production of ' The Blue Bird ' must be made with the purity of fantasy of a ten-year-old child. It must be naive, simple, light, full of the joy of life, 34 THE LAND OF MEMORY THE FAKEWELL "the blue bird" at the MOSCOW ART THEATRE Aji^* P5 El < » Eh Eh < O O O a H CO. Eh IB S < >i^ I'.V III.' AuIIm ■I'inO MAIIINrtKV ■I'lllOATIIIO, I'K'I'IM M ; 11 \ II TIIK TWI) IIOMKS <)!'• TIM'; IIUSSIAN IIAMiKT AM) Ol'KltA PlKilnyrapli l.,\- ^.or^k\-. biillcl m;istrr. .\joscow (FiMrii left to right) ANDEUSON, KAXDAOUEOVA AND GORSHKOVA, OF THE BALLET, MOSCOW The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home of the splendid flowers of its imagination developed beyond the frontiers of Russia were to be brought back home and incorporated into its famished body to fertil- ize it and bring forth new and undreamed beauty. Stravinsky, known only through some of the indepen- dent orchestras, was to be heard for the first time in the home of the Ballet. Bakst and his madly colored scenery were to be brought back from Paris and Lon- don and America. The short, intensely dramatic ballets which made up the repertory of Sergei Diag- ileff in his wanderings over the earth, were to wave their passionate wand for the first time over Moscow and Petrograd. Even yet I find it difficult to conceive of Moscow and Petrograd still awaiting their first sight and hearing of Bakst and Stravinsky, of " Petrushka " and " The Fire Bird " and " The Crowning of Spring " and " The Afternoon of a Faun " and " Tamar." Diagileff bor- rowed his dancers by imperial permission from the Great State Theatre in Moscow and the Marinsky in Petrograd, but he gathered his scenery and his music from Russians living in artistic exile in Paris and Ge- neva and then revealed his garnered secrets only to the rest of Europe and afterwards to the Americas. The Revolution in March, 1917, promised a welcome home for all this banished beauty, but before the theatres, reborn and eager in their freedom, could complete their plans for expanding their repertories, the economic demoralization of Russia put the cost of production of new plays and ballets beyond even State subsidies. 97 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution I suppose it was the discovery that none of these vivid and stimulating forces of the Russian Ballet had ever been tolerated in Russia itself which impressed on me most acutely the spiritual htmger from which the Ballet had suffered under the autocracy. My as- tonishment grew as I came in contact with the artists who had remained in Russia and had seized the few opportunities for expression which had been grudg- ingly granted them. Here was Korovin, the equal of Bakst as a master of color and a surer if less fantastic creator of eloquent background. To what use had his genius and his visions been put ? Once in a while, the settings for one of the old conventional ballets would wear out. And Korovin was permitted to design their successors, — brilliant and stirring moments all but lost on the antiquated and uninspired score and plot. Here were Prokofieff and Kuroff and other composers of a new generation struggling against a tradition that per- mitted scarcely anything more modem than GlazunoflF's " Raymonda " in the repertory. Here was Mordkin, as virile and impetuous as he was when he helped Pav- lova unfold for us first the witchery of the Ballet, his dramatic fire and his creative energy bound down to the precise and lifeless roles of the o^itwom classics. Here were a dozen dancers, young and ambitious and restless in a new time, who had never ventured beyond their native stages and who had not felt the lure of the newer impulses but who were ready and straining to devote their ripening powers to a rarer beauty. And last of all, here was a corps de ballet, an ensemble, such 98 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home as none but Russians had seen, lifting even the anti- quated repertory to an undue eminence by the mastery of their technique and the thrill of their impassioned spirit. If Russia has still to see and hear Bakst and Stravinsky, the rest of the world has still to experience the excitement stirred by the ensemble of the Russian Ballet in its own home ! The home of the Ballet, as I have said, is not singu- lar. Moscow and Petrograd vied with each other be- fore the war with a rivalry far keener than that be- tween the Boston Opera at its height and the Metro- politan. Rather, the competition and the municipal patriotism it aroused resembled the struggles between our baseball teams. Even then, however, the ancient capital must have outshone the new one on the Neva. Its school produced a more astonishing ensemble. The dancers of the first rank and promise at the Great Im- perial Theatre outnumbered those at the Marinsky. It is true, Karsavina usually danced at the latter, but Moscow had Mordkin, and the next eight or ten baller- inas to be named after Karsavina were all daughters of the Kremlin. By the time I reached Russia, war and revolution had only emphasized the leadership of Mos- cow. Karsavina alone made the Ballet at the Marin- sky notable. Then, too, life in Moscow was more en- durable, more conducive to the light-hearted spirit of the Ballet, while the Great State Theatre was always a more imposing and fitting home for the art of the dance. Moscow's Theatre Place, dominated by this solid 99 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution pile, is the second centre of the city, ranking next after the great Red Square outside the KremHn. In one or the other of these concourses, all of the historic gath- erings of the city have centered, — all of the revolts, the celebrations, the demonstrations. The windows of Hotel Metropole overlook its gardens and its trolley wires. The age-mottled yellow stone walls of the Small State Theatre flank its eastern side and the The- atre Nezlobina its western edge. Peering down from the north, the huge Ionic columns of the Great State Theatre overshadow everything else. Scarred here and there by the bullets and the shells of Bolsheviki and Junkers, they stand unharmed like a bronze statue peppered with bird shot. The doors opening under- neath them lead through the vast corridors and stair- cases dear to the heart of the architects of the first half of the nineteenth century, while the shallow horseshoe balconies and galleries rising six or seven to the roof betray the same ancestry. It certainly is not distinc- tively Russian. Nor is there an)^hing of the " new theatre" in it. Realism would be impossible with its stage as big as all outdoors and its auditorium seating almost five thousand. But it is instinct with the spirit of the theatre, it is a theatrical theatre ; and inasmuch as the Ballet is perhaps the most theatrical of all the arts of the theatre, the Moscow home of the Russian Ballet is as it should be. The first evidence I had that all was not going as well with the Ballet as the Revolution had promised, came the week the theatre reopened after the November lOO The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home upheaval. Sobinoff , Russia's leading tenor with a Voice sweeter and better trained than Caruso's and almost as powerful, was the kotnmissar or regisseur, elected by the artists of the theatre after the manner of all delegated authority in democratic Russia. But Sob- inoff was singing in Petrograd just then. I was una- ware of his absence and I couldn't understand why my letter to him had gone unanswered. Everywhere else, the doors had opened for me most graciously. It may have been a case of stubborn American honor, but I was determined not to pay to see the Ballet after all the other theatres had made me their winter's guest. Twenty minutes before the curtain no reply had ar- rived, and I suddenly grabbed a young Russian friend by the arm. " Are you game to talk Russian for me? " I asked him. " If you are, we'll storm the place and be Bol- sheviki ourselves." He assented, for he hadn't been educated in England for nothing, though he hadn't quite the assurance of an American collegian. The gruff old watchdog at the stage door was our first ogre. He stood his ground luitil Bulgakoff, one of the artists' staff who had managed Gertrude Hoffman's Russo- American tournee a dozen years ago, came through the passageway and with a word cleared the path for us to an iimer office. Thence, our decisive and vigorous methods sufficed to carry us by way of the stage to Sobinoff's box, a canopied retreat with great gilt chairs reserved for court dignitaries in an elder time. A week passed and a new ballet was announced. lOI The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Sobinoff was still in Petrograd. Every one was in command and no one was in command. My efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the Ballet were fruitless. But the watchdog at the stage door had not seen us ejected at the tip of a Russian boot on our first visit, and so our ruse succeeded a second time and a third. Such a footing, though, was too precarious for comfort. And so I accepted the cordial offer of as- sistance from Boris Maitoff, a devoted connoisseur of the Ballet whom I had met in Sobinoff's box. One of his ancestors had come to Russia from England a century ago, and he himself had spent a year in Texas buying cotton and winning a charming American wife. In all my winter's research, no one was more tireless in helping me to meet and talk with the leaders of the Russian theatre than Maitoff. Through Maitoff I finally arranged with Elena Con- stantina, Sobinoff's secretary, to see the holiday rep- ertory of the Ballet, and all in regular form with a very official looking pass. One afternoon the brother of my original fellow-raider and I had penetrated as far as the stage on the pass, but the door into the box was still locked. We roamed around among the scenery and the gathering chiffon of the corps and then out in front of the curtain. There was our box, just a good half -leap from the stage. We were early and there was hardly any one in the auditorium. I overcame my companion's scruples and we clambered up to our seats. But we hadn't counted on the watchdog of this particular portion of the theatre, and when we emerged I02 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home from the box to buy a programme he was up the stairs at a leap and demanding our pass. Law and order might vanish everywhere else but this particular sentry of the old regime was faithful! Unfortunately, the pass had been made out by mistake for one instead of for myself and my interpreter. One of us had to leave! Of course, neither of us did, but it took an intricate circuit through winding corridors, a deal of waiting and the loss of the overture to " The Sleeping Beauty " before our shveytsar nemesis was satisfied by the inadvertent nod of a friend of Sobinoff's. Toward the end of the winter, though, Sobinoff gave up in de- spair under the heckling of the Soviet and I had to seek new alliances. After numerous negotiations, which were not worth the effort in money but which had become a matter of stubborn pride, I finally made arrangements with that august body of the proletariat itself whereby I was to have an entire red silk box and all its gilt chairs to myself whenever I wished it ! But the peace had been signed ; Moscow was becoming day by day a less pleasant and secure habitation ; an endless series of political wrangling without much purpose or much result loomed up before me, and the following week I packed my photographs and my memories and started on the long trail home. Of the ballets visible in Moscow under the Revolu- tion, those of Tchaikovsky were easily preeminent. In them none of the passion and the sensuousness and the dramatic fire of " Tamar " and " Sheherazade " and "Petrushka" of the Diagileff repertory. "The 103 The Russian Theatre Under the Revoltdion Sleeping Beauty " and " Swan Lake " are simply the conservative classic ballet, but they are the height of that ballet, built up of prettiness, naive fairy narra- tive and generous infusions of what some one has called " absolute dancing ", dancing of the classic steps for their own sake, devoid of dramatic significance. I was distinctly surprised to find that the Russian pubUc still considers this the ideal aspect of the Ballet. You might think yourself in La Scala in Milan watching a breathless audience follow a singer to her high note and then go mad with applause, for that is what happens with the great technicians of the dance in Moscow. Splendidly and terribly imaginative characterization in the Ballet such as that of the weird Nizhinsky is not appreciated at anywhere near its true value. Nizhinsky is one among many in Russia. He has had to go abroad to earn the reward for his supreme imaginative gifts. And unless I am much mistaken, there are sev- eral of the younger generation who will have to do the same if they wish to be considered anything more than excellent actors obtruding their inferior gifts in the pres- ence of the superior art of the toe dance. Either the intense choreographic dramas produced by Diagileff are a source of envy, jealousy or suspicion, or else the connoisseurs of the Ballet in Moscow would deliber- ately prefer the classic to the dramatic ballet if they had to choose between them. Of this I am sure : the dra- matic ballet will never descend to mere pantomime in Russia. The insistent and persistent demand for a display of all the intricate technique of the toe dance 104 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home will take care of that danger. Wherever the Ballet goes in its experiments under the new freedom, it will carry along with it the technique of its classic era. The supremacy of the two ballets by Tchaikovsky lies largely in their rich and unified scores. None of the others in the repertory I saw could compare with either in this respect. Some of them, like the ancient " Corsar " and " Don Quixote ", are such unconscion- able crazy quilts of odds and ends from all the com- posers since the beginning of time, that my attention was diverted from the action to the anxiety as to what old favorite from the family tune book would jump at me next from the conductor's baton. Surely these creaking gaffers are not the goal which the marvellous structure of the Russian Ballet has been erected to in- terpret. Neither is " Coppelia " worthy of all the effort bestowed upon it. " Bayaderka ", the Hindu ballet by Mincous, is on a higher plane, with a vivid and dramatic though conventional story, and a score that is alert if not greatly interesting. What gives " Bayaderka " distinction are the costumes and the scenery by Korovin, considerably superior to his work for " Corsar " by which he has tried in vain to galvan- ize Adam's timeworn score into life. Of all the ballets at the Great State Theatre in Moscow, though, per- haps the most characteristically Russian is the fantas- tic dramatization of the Russian folk-tale, " Konyok- Gorhunok", or " The Hump-backed Hobbyhorse." The whimsies of its naive plot, of Puni's music, and of Korovin's jolly peasant costumes and rustic scenes los The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution combine to make it a happy example of the Ballet in its middle mood. Moscow and Petrograd are relentless judges of the novice in the Ballet. Skill in technique is the first con- sideration. Personal charm and beauty are appre- ciated, but they are strictly subordinated to the funda- mentals of performance. Thus it is that the elder dancers hold their roles and their places in the public affection securely against the youth and the eagerness of the new generation. To win the title of ballerina and the right to dance a leading role, one must toil patiently for years in the lesser parts or even in the corps. To be graduated from the school into a minor role, skip- ping service in the corps, is considered the highest trib- ute to the young dancer. In Petrograd, therefore, Karsavina has reigned supreme, not only because of this loyalty to mature skill but also because few of her younger consorts either there or in Moscow are danger- ous rivals. Fokina was absent in Copenhagen and Karaly ill in Finland, and so none of the first baller- inas of the generation of Pavlova and Karsavina was present to dispute the latter's prestige. In Moscow, however, faithfulness to the experienced artist seemed to me to bestow credit out of all proportion to deserts. The Ballet public acknowledged the leadership of Gel- tser. There is no denying her technique or her bound- less spirits, but she left my feelings cold and unkindled. Balashova, too, although many years Geltser's junior, profited in popular esteem and choice of roles at the expense of several of the younger generation who dis- io6 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home played far greater genius but who were still working out their novitiate. Naturally, even in Russia, the future lies in the lap of this younger generation. For me, however, the present is also in their keeping. It is they who reward the pilgrim to the home of the Ballet with the thrill and the fire which is the secret of the Ballet's greatness. It is they who were missing from Diagileff's ranks, — they and the astonishing corps of Moscow whose ab- sence prevented the Russian Ballet in America from fulfilling all its prospects and its promises. It is they who stand straining on the threshold of a new day, waiting to merge the traditions of the past with the dreams of the future. Anderson, Fyodorova, Krieger and Kandaourova interest me most. All of them are firmly grounded in technique. Each of them ex- presses herself through a personality that is rich and distinctive, the personality of a genuine artist. Anderson is marked for the most brilliant future of them all in her native Russia, — Elizabeth Julia Anderson, to give her full name for the benefit of curious America and in order to propitiate a guilty sense of brusqueness at using merely the surname, Russian- fashion. I had seen her as one of the Pearls who dance with Ocean under the sea in " The Hump-backed Hobbyhorse ", in which Kandaourova has the leading role. Here is a remarkably proficient young lady, I thought, but I was unprepared for the display of vir- tuosity and genius she revealed when she danced the title part in Tchaikovsky's " The Sleeping Beauty." 107 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution This light-haired, trim, sensitive girl has probably the keenest esthetic of any one in the Ballet in Russia to-day. Certainly she has the finest sense of ballet form since Pavlova. In addition to her technical gifts and her perfect control of them, rivalling that of the greatest dancer of our generation, Anderson has a warmth of personality which Pavlova with her aus- terity has never been able to bestow on her work. She can never be the Greek goddess as Pavlova can, but she has possibilities in more human parts which her prede- cessor can not touch. Of Scandinavian extraction on her paternal side, Anderson has a distinctly light and northern air about her. It was her grandfather who emigrated from Denmark and gave her an un-Russian name and per- haps her shimmering blonde beauty. Her mother, however, was a member of a prominent Moscow mer- chant's family and to her she probably owes her thor- oughly Russian spirit and imagination. In Moscow she was born in 1890 and at the age of nine she en- tered the Imperial Ballet School. From the very first, she appeared on the stage of the Great Theatre in the parts of elves, gnomes and angels. At the age of six- teen she was graduated from the school with the first degree, which permitted her to forego apprenticeship in the corps de ballet and to enter immediately into the roles of the second leading dancer. In that rank in 1911 and 1912 she danced in London with Karsavina at the Coliseum and with Geltser at the Alhambra. One of the roles she played in those foreign seasons io8 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home was the antic cat in Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty." Aside from those brief excursions, she has danced only in Moscow, where she attained her first leading role, Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty", in the season of 1916-1917, and her next, Odetta in Tchaikovsky's " Swan Lake ", while I was in Moscow. Her forte, she thinks, is the classic ballet, but I am sure that her mastery of the classic technique, like that of Pavlova, will give force and assurance and poise to the dramatic roles she is destined to play in the newer ballets. Two things above all please me in an art like the Ballet. One of them is the perfect control of power such as that of Pavlova and Anderson. The other is that superabundance of power and nervous energy which defies all control and literally overflows its con- taining body in every direction. Of course, there must be technical skill to absorb the bulk of this power or else the exhibition descends to mere animal romping. But it is not unpleasing, especially in extreme youth, to see an artist using twice the force needed to accomplish a given task. I know then that the vital energy is there and that time and experience may bring it under con- trol. It is this, I think, which interests me most in Krieger, one of the latest additions to the roster of leading ballerinas. I know of no one in the entire course of the Russian Ballet who has her electrical swiftness of movement and lightness of' touch. Moscow audiences censure her for the prodigality with which she expends 109 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution her energy, but they like her for her superabundance of spirit, — zhizn or Ufe, the Russians call it. She is Russian to the core ; she has danced nowhere except in Moscow and she doesn't wish to dance anywhere else until she has grounded herself more firmly in her pro- fession. Krieger comes naturally by her art, for her family has long been connected with the Russian theatre and her father is now one of the leading players at the Thea- tre Korsha in Moscow. She was bom in 1893, en- tered the Imperial Ballet School in 1904 and was grad- uated in 1912. Of a somwhat later period in her in- struction than Anderson, she has been less influenced by the ambition to rival Pavlova and therefore she is proceeding on her course of development quite inde- pendently. Pavlova to her is a name and a reputation rather than an experience, for the greatest dancer had left Russia several years before Krieger completed her period of instruction. Her first leading role was in "The Hump-backed Hobbyhorse" in 1915 and her second in " Don Quixote." Almost her entire experi- ence, therefore, has dated since the beginning of the war. American audiences, if they have the opportunity, will welcome the radiant Kandaourova for her surpassing beauty and the dark, lithe impassioned Fyodorova for her power as an actress. Two dancers could hardly differ more, one from another. Kandaourova appeals placidly but pleasantly to the senses, Fyodorova hotly to the emotions, Both of them have that perfect con- lio Saliaroff, Mose MIHAIL MORDKIN AND MARGARITA FROMAN IN THE BALLET, "aZIADE," STAGED BY MORDKIN A SKETCH BY KORO\'IX FOR A .SETTING IX THE BALLET, BAYA- DEKKA," AT THE GREAT STATE THEATRE, MOsroW Phoioirraph, hy the Aulhor FYODOR IVAXOVITCH SHALIAPIX (SEATED), RUSSIA 's GREATEST OPERA SIXGER, AND CONSTANTIN ALEXEIEVITf H KOROVIX, PAIXTER. IX THE STT DIO OF THE LATTER. MARf H. 1918 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home trol of the body which is a prerequisite for the first rank in the Ballet. To this, Kandaourova adds a quick sense of gracefulness and a fairy prettiness, while Fyodorova in addition is probably the ablest de- lineator of character the Russian Ballet has produced. Of the others, Margarita Froman has already been to this country with Diagileff and she is now the dancing partner of Mihail Mordkin in his produc- tions independent of the State Theatre. Rey?en has an incisive dark beauty, and Balashova an aristocratic face and great vitality. Of the men, Mordkin still stands alone. You have only to see him dance the Bacchanale at the Theatre of the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies in Moscow, where he has complete control of all Ballet productions since his disagreement with the Great State Theatre, to realize what made that moment of dance so exciting when he and Pavlova first gave it to America nearly a decade ago. He is still the same Mordkin, tireless, ambitious, impetuous in his eager good-will, his physi- cal powers undimmed, his imagination deepened and broadened. Mihail Mihailitch — Michael the son of Michael — as his friends know him, is almost as much a tradition among us as Pavlova is in her native Russia. He was a pupil of the Imperial Ballet School of Moscow and served his apprenticeship there and in Petrograd. It is nearly a decade now since he first came to us with Pavlova in the freshness of his early power, danced with her all over America, and then in 1912 after two III The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution seasons with us, suddenly withdrew into the mysterious land from which he sprang. Through a like interval Pavlova has been absent from Russia, a wanderer on the earth, dividing her time between London and Ma- drid, between New York and Buenos Aires, and all the stops en route. I had to reassure her fellow-citizens, shut off hopelessly from the world by years of war and revolution, that Pavlova still lives and dreams and works and thrills those who crowd into her charmed circle. And now, ever since my return to America, I find that I must recreate the shadowy Mordkin and bear witness that he, too, still lives and dreams and works and thrills great audiences who turn to him for a moment of encouragement under the Terror. It wasn't long after the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, that I picked up the broken thread of the past and once more held a Mordkin programme in my hand as I sat in the Theatre of the Soviet of Work- men's Deputies in Moscow. " Aziade " was the ballet, a tale of the Arabian Nights arranged and pro- duced by Mordkin himself, with music by Glutei, a contemporary composer of promise who conducted his own score, and with scenery by Goloff, a Moscow ar- tist of to-day with a keen sense for vivid color. Btit these details didn't matter. Fate and faith hung on the entrance of the Sheik Usein played by Mordkin. Could he still draw my muscles tense just by the ap- pearance of his magnetic presence on the scene ? And so when he doubled the; thrill even against the odds of such vaulting expectation and followed it by an amaz- 112 The Russian Ballet in lis Own Home ing and unsuspected command of dramatic technique working intimately with the technique of the dance, then I knew that here at least was an idol unbroken in iconoclastic Russia. Here was the mature Mordkin, on toward forty, of whom our glimpse a decade ago was not the fulfillment but only the prophecy. For several years after his return to Russia, Mordkin did not apply too vigorously the energetic precepts he had learned in America. He went to London in 1914, but, back again in Moscow and Petrograd, he danced the roles assigned him in the conventional ballets which stifled the sedate repertories of the Imperial Theatre. Still, all the time the leaven was working. All the time Mordkin, dancer, longed to be Mordkin, postan- ovka, producer. The first Revolution brought him his opportunity in the summer of 1917. By a more or less peaceful and orderly form of expropriation, the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies in Moscow took over the lease of Zimin's Opera House, a private institution second in importance only to the Great State Theatre. Here for years Zimin had produced Opera and Ballet in ri- valry with the Imperial Theatre, welcoming to his stage new works more readily than the conservative institu- tion, much in the manner of Oscar Hammerstein dur- ing his tenancy of the Manhattan Opera House in New York. The Soviet assumed all of Zimin's obligations to his singers and his staff and in addition induced Fyodor Kommissarzhevsky, director of one of Mos- cow's experimental theatres, to produce new operas and Mihail Mordkin to take charge of the Ballet. 113 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Things had reached that pass when I arrived in Mos- cow. Mordkin still retained his connection with the Great State Theatre of Moscow, although he no longer danced there. In the spring of 1918, even that thread to the past was broken, for his independent methods shocked the staid traditions of the elder institution and he was put outside its ranks. To his own ballet school and his productions at the Theatre of the Soviet he de- voted most of his time. The Bolshevik Opera, we called it, for the Soviet insisted on running the front part of the house. Although the seats were numbered, no one could find them, and you fought for your place as you would in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds. The only salvation lay in the fact that no one was ad- mitted during an act and your squatter sovereignty held good that long, at least. Back stage, however, the Soviet had sense enough to let their appointed directors hold sway. And the con- trast in order and efficiency and ensemble suggests that Russia might be a more whole and happy land if she turned everything over to her artists ! It was here in this atmosphere of order and freedom that Mordkin, dancer, grew to be Mordkin, producer. Here he brought to life his passionate, vivid tale of Araby, " Aziade ", an intense tragic night under tented can- opies, with the triangular design so common in Russian art pushed to a nerve-shattering point in the decora- tions, and with costumes by contrast made up of sin- uous, curving figures. In it he plays the sheik who woos a beautiful captive girl, Aziade, only to fall by her 114 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home hand after she has repulsed him and then feigned affec- tion in order to kill him. Margarita Froman, Mord- kin's present partner, is the girl. She is not another Pavlova, but she has grace and personal charm and is an excellent foil for Mordkin's aggressive manner. Somehow there is less to be said of the other men despite their ability. Zhukoff at the Great Theatre stands head and shoulders above the others in the on- coming generation and plays the roles formerly as- signed to Mordkin with a nice combination of grace and vigor. The classic technique delegates to the man the function of balance wheel, the pivot round which the more spectacular work of his partner is woven, and no one fulfills this duty with more assurance and less obtrusiveness than Zhukoff, although some of the bal- lerinas prefer to dance with the slender Novikoff or the stalwart Svoboda and some in the audience prefer to see them. Novikoff's form is beyond criticism but he hardly gives the impression of power in reserve that distinguishes such dancers as Mordkin and Bolm and Zhukoff. No roster of the home guards of the Ballet would be complete without the antic Ryabtseff. To him fall invariably all the clownish roles. He is kicked and cuffed around like the fools of Shakespeare, and yet on occasion he displays his mastery of the serious technique which is at the base of all the ballet training. No one in Moscow, not even Stanislavsky of the Art Theatre, is so difficult to find or to follow. In addition to his exacting duties at the Great State Theatre, Ryab- "5 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution tseff finds time to be the regisseur of the Theatre Nez- lobina, a dramatic house; the business manager of Youzhny's Variety Theatre, and the director of his own ballet school. No record is complete, either, without a glimpse of the sensitive artist who has contributed the most imagina- tive scenic settings to the Ballet in Moscow and Petro- grad, — Constantin Alexeievitch Korovin. Born in Moscow in November, 1861, he was graduated from the Academy of Painting there at the age of twenty. Later, at twenty-three, he studied and exhibited in Paris and at twenty-six in London. He is one of the few Russian artists who know America from experi- ence, for at the age of thirty-two he was connected with the Russian exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposi- tion at Chicago in 1893. On his return to Europe, he had an atelier in Paris where Americans frequently congregated. As a young man he designed the dec- orations and costumes for a period of eight years at the private theatre and opera of Mamontoff in Mos- cow. For many years now, he has been the leading ar- tist in the scenic studios of the state-endowed Opera and Ballet. Despite all his travels and his mastery of his art, Korovin is of an extremely diffident and retiring na- ture. It was only the day before I left Moscow that I penetrated with some friends to his studio off the Myasnitskaya. The anxious years of war and revolu- tion had told seriously on the artist, and I found him obsessed with a kind of nameless dread, although no ii6 The Russian Ballet in Its Own Home conceivable political or social change could put him in jeopardy. In preparation for a flight which he feared as much as he did the ordeal of remaining in Russia, he had sold off most of his precious canvases. Those that remained he permitted me to photograph to my heart's content, and in addition he thrust into my hands many rare prints of his productions. " You may keep them until I see you again," he said with character- istic Russian faith and simplicity. In the presence of old friends, however, he lost some of his nervous anxiety and entered into a discussion with boyish zeal. Mid-afternoon, Shaliapin, Russia's and, I think, the world's greatest opera singer, dropped in for a chat. I had heard him in " Boris Godunoff " in Petrograd at the Narodny Dom the month before, and I had yielded more unquestioningly to the actor than to the barytone, for Shaliapin would probably be the greatest living actor if he lost his singing voice to-morrow.. In the intimacy of the informal Russian living room, where we sat for hours around the lunch table after Mme. Korovin had cleared away a frugal meal, we listened to Fyodor Ivanovitch — for that is the name by which all Russia knows him, down to the poorest peasant — and his stories. Every inch of his six feet four was instinctive with drama and with in- domitable vitality. The future of the Russian theatre is, indeed, dark, but with men of such fineness and strength as these to tide it over to better days, it is not hopeless. The dreams of the Ballet have been sadly shattered 117 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution by the Revolution, but they have not been destroyed. Freed from an oppressive conservatism, the Ballet finds its hands tied anew by the economic demoralization of the country. Subsidies have not ceased, but they have ceased to be sufficient for the Ballet to make any prog- ress. For a while, the proletarian hatred of all the fruitage of the autocracy threatened to engulf the theatre and the opera and the ballet. But wiser counsels prevailed. The leaders of the Bolsheviki have just as much respect as any one else for these proud possessions of the Russian people. They have their own crude and abrupt way of expressing that re- spect, and endless friction has resulted from the pugna- cious disturbance of honored customs, but the salaries of the artists have gone on and the doors have been kept open. In such times as these, however, the meagre funds set aside for upkeep do not suffice for new pro- ductions. " Petrushka " was to have been seen for the first time in Russia at the Great State Theatre in Mos- cow the winter I was there, and that was only one of the hopes lifted and then dashed by the course of the Revolution. The Russian Ballet, like all the other Russian arts, may count itself fortunate if it can hold its ranks together and weather the storm as an institu- tion intact, if it can preserve some semblance of its school and hand on to the artists of less distressing days the beauty of its spirit. ii8 CHAPTER VIII The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre One of the best of all reasons why the Russian theatre has survived political and even social revolution is that its roots strike deeply and firmly into the past. Its birth, along with the other Russian arts, out of the womb of a people's sorrow helps explain why it persists supreme among modern theatres in spite of the chaos and the anxiety and the bitterness of class struggle. To its spiritual consolation and its honest vision, the nation turns in the days of its deeper sorrow. And yet, rich as it has been in performing this service, it probably would not have borne the shock of the Terror if it had not been grounded for generations in the minds and affections of all Russians. For us to think of the Russian theatre in terms of generations requires something of a mental wrench. The Moscow Art Theatre we know by rumor and the Russian Ballet by its pleasant dalliance on our shores. But the former was created out of Stanislavsky's dream in our own time, and the latter startled the world only from the moment Isadora Duncan rekin- dled its flame. The Russian theatre seems to us like the newest theatre in the world. Instead, its geneal- ogy is from Pushkin and Griboyedoff , from Gogol and 119 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Ostrovsky as playwrights and from Motchaloff, tra- gedian, and Shchepkin, comedian, as players. For a hundred years it has been the secure refuge of Russian genius from the oppression of reaction and autocracy. The continuation to-day of this elder tradition of the Russian theatre, the flower of these roots, is the Small State Theatre in Moscow, home of the Russian classic drama. Small it is only by comparison with its partner in governmental subsidies, the Great State Theatre, guardian of Opera and the Ballet, for it seats at least a thousand people and its stage is larger than its auditorium. Its age-yellowed exterior stands unob- trusive guard over the east side of the Theatre Place, a stone's throw from the imposing Ionic portico of the Great Theatre. Inside, balustrades and corridors of masonry lead to an interior of red and gold and plush and draperies. Tradition sits down beside you in your seat. Flavor of men and manners of other years crosses the footlights without a shock, for you yourself in the brief interval since you left the anxious turmoil of to-day's out-of-doors have been led back into the mood of other years. I wish we had a single theatre like this for our Shakespeare and for the rest of our less hardy but still picturesque classic drama. The proponents of experiment and the " new theatre " would not be interested in it, but we should then know, as Russia knows, the tenacious virility of the past and the leavening power of tradition. My host in Moscow, Andrei Yegorovitch Weber, was one of those who believed passionately in these 1 20 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre elder values, and so, though my own inclination carried me oftener to the middle-aged Art Theatre, already settling into its own tradition, and to the youthful theatres of artistic revolt, I was not permitted for long to forget the quiet and unobtrusive dignity of the Small State Theatre. Vladimir Tardoff, too, a newspaper friend with tastes similar to my own, warned me, in my quest for the new and the strange, not to neglect the home of the classic drama. " There you will find Ostrovsky handed down in unbroken succession from the mid-nineteenth century. With Gogol and GriboyedofF, a still elder tradition is preserved. And there, too, you will see how the Rus- sian has welcomed into his repertory the best of the drama of western Europe, from Moliere and Shake- speare down to Ibsen. In the political terminology of to-day, the Small State Theatre stands on the ex- treme right in matters of art, preserving and guarding, modestly but earnestly, the humanism of the past. And over its affairs, one of the finest spirits in all Rus- sian art to-day presides, Prince Alexander Ivanovitch Sumbatoff." Accordingly, with Tardoff 's card, I sought the prince at home and in the playhouse. The derangement of the theatre's plans by the Bolshevik Revolution made the prince a very busy man and hard to find. It was only after a most cordial correspondence in French that our trails met one evening between the acts in his own private greenroom which opened off his loge. Al- ready he had arranged with the doorkeepers that I 121 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution should come at will and sit with my interpreter in the front row of chairs placed in a slight depression between the first row of the parterre and the edge of the apron and denoted the " orchestra ", although no musical di- version ever breaks the continuity of a Russian dra- matic performance. The seats were not the best in the house, but they were the only ones readily and inva- riably at his disposal, for the entire auditorium with the exception of this orchestra was often reserved by sub- scription. And so almost his first words after our meeting were an apology for the arrangements he had made for me. " It doesn't matter ! " I said in all sincerity. " I am at home anywhere in the theatre." Instantly, his all-enclosing hand reached across the table and gripped mine in earnest sympathy, for he, too, has been at home " anywhere in the theatre " ever since as a boy in the First Gymnasium of Tiflis he was drawn to the stage. Alexander Ivanovitch is a prince of the Caucasus. He was born September 17, 1857, into one of the oldest families of Georgia on the estate of his mother in the Government of Tula, south of Moscow. He entered the law school of the University of Petrograd in 1877, but immediately on his graduation in 1881 he turned to the stage and joined the company of Brenko's Push- kin Theatre, in Moscow. F. A. Korsh, whose red brick playhouse is still one of the landmarks of Mos- cow's dramatic life, was just completing his institu- tion at that time, and on the closing of the Pushkin 122 c H a o _ w <1 H E- Iz * K O < H .J < a X H < o ^ c o H Z o CO The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre Theatre, Sumbatoff joined the ranks of Korsh. The same year he was invited without trial by the regisseur Potiehin to the Small Imperial Theatre of Moscow, and there on September 12, 1882, he made his first appearance as Tchatsky in the finest example of classic Russian comedy, Griboyedoff's " Gore ot Uma." And there he has played and perfected his art as come- dian and tragedian for thirty-seven years, except when the entire company left Moscow for one of its infre- quent guest tours to Petrograd or to the provincial cities or even so far afield as Belgrade, Serbia, in 1900. As player and playwright. Prince SumbatoflF uses the stage name Youzhin, but he is known and loved throughout Russia by his given name, Alexander Ivan- ovitch. He began to write for the theatre while he was still a student in the University, and his first play, " The Lightning Rod ", was produced with success in 1878 by the Moscow Artistic Circle. His next, " Rustling Leaves ", was first played October 14, 1881, at the Small Imperial Theatre in Moscow and the following season at the Alexandrinsky in Petrograd. " Sergei Satiloff " followed in 1883, but although it is published in his works the censor denied it performance. Other plays followed in rapid succession, presented both in Moscow and Petrograd : " The Husband of a Celeb- rity ", 1884; " The Arkazofifs ", 1886; " The Chains ", 1888; "Tsar Ivan IV", in verse, 1890; and "The Commune of Irin ", 1901. He has continued his com- position in later years but with less frequency and I have no complete list. His " Night Birds " was in the 123 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution repertory of the Small State Theatre during the winter of 1917-1918. A record kept until 1901 showed a total of over six thousand performances of his various plays in the theatres throughout Russia and that sum must have been more than doubled by to-day. Several of his plays have been translated into Polish, Czech, Serbian, German and French. As a playwright, You- zhin has followed in the realistic tradition of Ostrov- sky, in whose comedies he has so often appeared at the Small State Theatre. The background of their action is sometimes the life of provincial actors, sometimes that of the impoverished nobility, and sometimes that of the modern Russian merchant. I asked Alexander Ivanovitch one afternoon in his modest apartment, enriched with rare rugs and hang- ings from the Caucasus and beyond, what was his favorite role in the hundreds he had played, and before I could stop his eager catalogue he had named a dozen out of Shakespeare and Schiller and Hugo. I know he takes great delight in Shylock which I saw him play twice in a finely flavored production of " The Merchant of Venice" staged in the conventional man- ner. His Jew is one of great dignity and self-com- mand, the embodiment of the hatred and vengeance of an oppressed race. Outward good will and inward revenge gleam alternately from his eyes when he agrees to the bond. His eyes are eloquent, too, after Jessica's flight, — set and glazed as he looks toward the sky with something of the wounded patriarch about him. His finest moments, though, come in the fourth act, as they 124 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre should. I have never seen Shylock face his expected triumph more proudly. He stands like a pillar, arms folded, while the doge outlines the case. His knife he removes from the sheath with a jerk, his eyes glitter as he sharpens it, he tests it with a hair from his beard, and then he utters a word of lip prayer before he ad- dresses the court. He is stunned at first by the verdict, but turns with quivering arms for his appeal to the doge, falling forward prostrate at the end. His departure is in silence, head bowed, — a broken man and a truly tragic figure who has appealed to the emotions through the intellect rather than through the emotions direct. Another role that gives him joy is, rather strangely, that of Bolingbroke in Scribe's " Le Verre d'Eau." The play is artifice and pasteboard to the last line, but like all Scribe, it is exultingly of the theatre theatrical, and that quality, I suppose, commends it to Youzhin's affection, for there is in him a strain of the old-time actor who loves the theatre for its own sake, with all its strut and fret, regardless of its contact with life. As a true artist, Youzhin likes to match himself against others, and so at alternate performances of "The Merchant ", Ossip Andreievitch Pravdin is the Shylock, making him the personification of individual hatred rather than of racial vengeance as that of Youzhin. Pravdin's service at the Small State Theatre antedates even that of Youzhin, for the fortieth anniversary of that service was celebrated while I was in Moscow. This sharp-eyed, gruff-voiced but kindly old actor and artist made his debut in the theatre at Helsingfors, I2S The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Finland, in 1869 at the age of twenty. After that, he played comic old men in Tiflis, Kieff and various cities until the great Shumsky discovered him and brought him to Moscow to appear on private stages. On Shumsky's death in 1878, Pravdin followed him at the Small State Theatre, where he has played and taught in the theatre school ever since. There are many other fine figures in the company at the Small Theatre, bridging several generations of Russian dramatic genius. Yermolova, grande dame of the Russian stage, is accounted its leading actress, though she seldom plays any more. Sadovskaya, eld- est scion of a family which compares with the Booths and the Drews and the Barr)Tnores in its service in the Russian theatre, still preserves a keen sense of the droll and the comic and counts those who love her from play- goers of her own advanced age down to the children. Lyeshkovskaya, though a younger actress, is yet of Youzhin's era. AidaroflF is equally able as actor and producer. Yablotchkina and Lyenin ^ no relative of the Bolshevik premier — are in their prime. Sadov- sky III, son of Sadovskaya, and Maximoff are perhaps the most promising of the young men, while the theatre's ablest actresses of the younger generation are Shchepkina, heiress of the traditions of another great acting family, and Gzovskaya. Only one new production has been made at the Small State Theatre since the Revolution, a double bill in- cluding Oscar Wilde's " Salome " and " A Florentine Tragedy " — the former, by the way, wholly missing 126 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre the passionate import of the drama while the latter sought out accurately and conveyed vividly the almost Greek simplicity of its sombre story. But, like the Art Theatre and all the other Russian playhouses, the Small Theatre had only to delve into its rich reper- tory to find old plays that are always new. Ready to the reviving hands of its directors were all the varied dramatic works of that peculiar possession of its storied stage, Alexander Nikolaievitch Ostrovsky, — history, satire and fancy. Equally ready were the plays of Tol- stoy, while from western literatures came trooping from the theatre's storehouse the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere and Scribe. In addition to the Shakespeare and the Wilde which I have recorded, I saw during the winter of 1917-1918 Ostrovsky's "Wolves and Sheep", "Truth Is Good but Luck Is Better" and " Vassilisa Melientieva " ; Lyoff Tolstoy's " The Fruits of Enlightenment " ; and Scribe's "Le Verre d'Eau." Other engagements prevented me from seeing three of Ostrovsky's masterpieces, " The Thunderstorm ", " Frenzied Finance " and " Voevoda " and Moliere's " The School for Husbands ", which were in the sea- son's repertory. But chief of them all, chief, I am inclined to believe, among the entire range of Russian classic drama, was that fine and sensitive flower of Russian culture, Griboyedoff's "Gore at Uma." If I had seen nothing on Youzhin's stage but the four acts of its tender but searching insight into life, I would have known the se- cret of the deeper roots of the Russian theatre. The 127 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution play's title defies adequate translation into English. " 111 Luck from Sense " it is, literally, but that will never do. " The Woes of Wisdom " someone has called it, with resultant moving picture connotations. The French are more successful, with " Mai de Trop d'Esprit." For myself, I prefer a paraphrase rather than a translation, and I like to call it " The Sorrows of the Spirit ", for that seems somehow to convey the mood of the play, a finely balanced adjustment of in- tellect and sentiment. In less honest hands than those of Alexander Serge- ievitch Griboyedofif, "The Sorrows of the Spirit" would savor of fastidious intellect and false sentiment. Even its artistic honesty might not be proof against the interpretation of artists less serious than Youzhin and his players. In fact, the presence in the ensemble of one of the few pieces of really bad acting I saw in an important role in a leading theatre during my entire winter in Russia showed how dependent the play is on the sympathy and understanding and sincerity with which it is presented, for it was this blemish rather than the Art Theatre's superiority in managing the crowded reception scene in the third act which made the younger institution's production of the same play more satisfactory in spite of Youzhin's masterly performance of Famusoff and in spite of the fitness of seeing a play of a century ago in a playhouse of its own era. The clash of education and cosmopolitan views against the stupidities of daily life in an isolated civili- zation and the power of the latter to smother and over- 128 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre ride the former is the theme of " The Sorrows of the Spirit." Alexander Andreievitch Tchatsky is the young man whose homecoming brings such bitter dis- illusioning. Before his exit into the world, he had loved Sophia, daughter of Famusoff, a substantial type of higher official in Moscow. On his return, he seeks her out, less in passion, one feels, than from self-re- spect, only to find that she has forgotten him for the philandering secretary of her father, Moltchalin. He seems unable, however, to accept this plausible incident in a complacent, animal-like existence such as the social leaders of Moscow lived a century ago, and instead of withdrawing immediately to the isolation which his own development has builded round him, he remains to cross verbal swords with Famusoff and his friends, criticising Moscow " where the houses are new and the prejudices ancient ", the perpetual balls, the verses in- scribed in albums, the celebrities of the English Club, the language " Franco-Nizhni-Novgorodian." Tchat- sky only gets himself well disliked for his pains and in the end finds himself charged even with an unbalanced mind. Thus does complacency protect itself from its critics. In the end, after shielding Sophia from scan- dal at his own expense, he exclaims : " Away from Moscow ! I shall never return again. Somewhere in the world I shall try to find a corner for my wounded feelings," and he calls his carriage. Tchatsky has been seen by those who doubt Russia's moral fibre and constructive power as a kind of Russian Hamlet, the embodiment of an inhibited will power, 129 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution national in scope. To the extent that he is faithful to the frequent inability of the Russian to persist practi- cally in an effort to achieve by slow degrees some de- sired change, there may be a measure of truth in such an interpretation. The whole point of the play is missed, however, if we do not see how Griboyedoff, as artist rather than as propagandist, used Tchatsky for the purpose of laying bare the sophistry and shallowness and complacency of the social fabric of his time. The fact that " The Sorrows of the Spirit " is more highly regarded in Russia to-day than when it was written is proof to me that Russian life has moved far from that period of smug isolation and that the fine ideals of Tchatsky stir a responsive chord in the public mind and heart which will rebuild Russia anew out of her present ruins. According to Pushkin and other friends of Griboyed- off, Tchatsky is autobiographical in his role of critic. The playwright, born January 17, 1795, travelled abroad and was in government service for a while in Persia, meeting his death at Teheran when a mob stormed the embassy February 11, 1829. "The Sor- rows of the Spirit " is the single work by which he will be remembered, although he wrote also of the Orient. The idea for the play came to him in 1812 but he did not begin work on it until 1816. Two years later at the age of twenty-three he had completed two acts, but the play was not finished until 1824. It encoun- tered the snares of the censorship from the start. In 1825, two parts of it were printed, but it was not 130 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre played, even in a modified form, until 1831, two years after the playwright's death. All of it but a few por- tions was printed in 1833, but the work in its entirety, both as book and as stage play, had to wait the liberal period of the reign of Tsar Alexander II in 1860. Two actors — MotchaloflF, tragedian, and Shchep- kin, comedian — founded the fame and the tradition of the Small State Theatre early in the last century. The present building was not erected until 1841, but their influence had already established the tendencies which were to differentiate the Russian theatre of the nineteenth century from that of western Europe. While English and French stages were still obsessed with the old, false pseudo-classicism of declamation, the theatre in Moscow under the guidance of Motchal- off and Shchepkin had cast aside these artificialities and had created a new art characterized by simplicity, life- likeness and sincerity of execution. Through this movement, the Russian theatre of the nineteenth cen- tury linked itself closely with the creators of Russian literature, Pushkin, Gogol, Griboyedoff and Bielinsky; with the Moscow University of the epoch of Granov- sky; and finally and mainly with the whole texture of Russian life. This contact with life has never since been lost, for the Russian theatre had entered into life not as an artificial appendage or addition but as a com- posite part of its organism. Nowhere else in the world to-day, except perhaps in Japan and China, is the thea- tre so firmly anchored in the habits and the affections of the people as it is in Russia. 131 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Small Theatre reaped the fruits of the instruction of Motchaloff and Shchepkin. The fecund pen of Ostrovsky produced a constant stream of works of the first rank for the use of its artists, and the theatre thrived under this incentive just as the Art Theatre found stimulus and inspiration in the successive works of Anton Tchehoff during its birth years from 1898 to 1904. The company's roster was studded with the names of such masters of the theatre as Sadovsky, Shumsky, Samarin, Zhivokiny, Fedotova, Vassilieva, Miedviedieva and Nikulina. The comedy of manners was their forte, — Ostrovsky first, and then western European comedy with Moliere at its head. They used to say in Moscow, " Sadovsky without Ostrov- sky and Ostrovsky without Sadovsky are inconceiv- able", and that Shumsky in Moliere surpassed the artists of the Comedie Frangaise. Little by little, however, under the influence of bu- reaucratic administration, the commonplace work of such play tinkers as Kruiloff (not the fable writer), Diatchenko and Tarnovsky crept into the repertory in the form of made-over plays from the French, and yet, side by side with mediocrity, the finer traditions of the theatre were kept alive by a younger generation of players from whom fame singled out for especial at- tention Yermolova, Lyeshkovskaya, Sadovskaya, You- zhin and Pravdin, — all of them still with the com- pany; and Lyensky, Goryeff, Maksheiefif, RibakoflF, Sadovsky II, Akimova and Muzil. Under the impulse 132 The Deeper Roots of the Russian Theatre of this brilliant group, the old classic tragedy was re- stored to the repertory alongside the continuing Os- trovsky; and the striking tragic powers of Youzhin, Lyensky and Goryeff found expression in the plays of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Goethe, Schiller, Hugo and Pushkin. The last quarter of the century, there- fore, set a new mark for the theatre and the repertory reached its greatest breadth. About 1900, however, death and illness weakened the company and the autoc- racy increased its interference, and so the Small Thea- tre went into eclipse for almost a decade behind the looming figure of the newly born Moscow Art Theatre. In 1908, Youzhin was forced into leadership by public opinion against the official antagonism, and, profiting by the example of the Art Theatre's thoroughness, he has restored the state institution in a period of ten years to its elder glory. What lies ahead of Alexander Ivanovitch and his company I do not know. The Revolution of March, 1917, found the theatre ready to take advantage of freedom to consolidate in the hands of the artists them- selves the powers yielded by the passing bureaucracy. A long document was drawn up, safeguarding not only the individual artist but the welfare of the production as a whole and providing for a sharp division between the financial and artistic functions of the theatre. De- spite Bolshevik threats from Petrograd, Alexander Ivanovitch hewed to the course of the theatre as de- cided in council, regardless of the new political tyr- anny. Since the removal of the Government to Mos- 133 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution cow, his course has necessarily been more discreet. The theatre is simply waiting for the return of social order and peace, — waiting patiently, but not idly, for it knows that it is well to repeat the elder truth and beauty until you have a new song to sing. My parting from Alexander Ivanovitch was as bit- ter as the greeting had been joyful. Two days before I left Moscow I called on him briefly in his apartment to say good-by. With a pause of hesitation, he asked me whether it would be possible for him to come to America arid play such roles as Shylock with an Eng- lish speaking company. I answered that I thought it might be arranged, and then, very simply, almost like a child, he asked, " But can a Russian come to America to-day without being ashamed that he is a Russian? " And in the surge of feeling that came over me, I al- most forgot to dispel his doubts, for here was the ruthless imprint of political march and countermarch on the sensitive soul of the artist. 134 CHAPTER IX The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt I plunged into the Russian theatre on the extreme left, to use the pohtical terminology which prevails in the Land of Revolutions to-day. Inasmuch as it was the first theatre to recover from the enforced vacation of the November Revolution, I started my theatregoing in Moscow at the Kamerny, a Little Theatre which is already a big theatre, — big in accom- plishment, in significance and in prospects. The Kamerny is an interesting and important theatre not only because it is new, but because it knows what it is trying to accomplish and it has learned by careful and earnest experiment many of the ways to accomplish it. The Kamerny, of course, is a revolutionary theatre in an artistic and not in a political sense. Contrary to the vast majority of Russians, its members would rather discuss light and color and posture than the future of the State. It is revolutionary in the sense that it has gone so far along the path of secession from the old conventional western theatre that the Moscow Art Theatre, a revolutionist of the early years of the century, now stands guard in the conservative or right comer of the Russian stage. The unfettered human 135 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution imagination is its inspiration; a simple symbolism based on common psychological experience is its method of expression; post impressionism, cubism and futurism are only a few of its manners of expression. And a frank and naive honesty and sincerity are the dominant characteristics of the group itself and of the artists whom it comprises. The Kamerny had a history. I was sure of that after I had visited it several times. It had a definite, conscious theory of the theatre, too. I was equally sure of that. For no theatre can display play after play in its repertory, all of them far off the beaten track of stage conventions and all of them achieving some measurable proportion of their evident intention, without having both a history in which it has had time to find itself and a theory to guide it along the path of its explorations. And it must be equally true that such a theatre has a personnel consisting of at least one and probably more than one distinctly individual and original imagination. Speaking by the calendar, the Kamerny is a war theatre, for it opened its doors for its first perform- ance December 25, 1914, well after Hindenburg had sent scurrying eastward the Russian hosts that had escaped his nets in the Mazurian lakes. In reality, however, it had its artistic birth a full season before in the Svobodny or Free Theatre, an experimental institution which opened its first and only season in the fall of 1913. A schism in its ranks resulted in the autumn of 1914 in the founding of two theatres 136 The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt in Moscow, the Kamerny, which took with it the regis- seur of the Free Theatre, Alexander Tairoff, and sev- eral of its most prominent players, and the Moscow Dramatic Theatre, which has become more of a pop- ular house, losing the revolutionary and experimental impulse that gave birth to the parent stage and that still drives the Kamerny along on its courageous path of discovery. If the Kamerny is not, therefore, strictly a war theatre, it is still a theatre which has grown to sta- bility and self-consciousness either because of or in spite of the war. All of its important work has been done while the Russian armies were in the field, while some of its own members were at the front or else while in uniform on furlough they snatched precious moments to rehearse or even play with the company at home. I know of no other country which has thus brought into the world and nurtured a movement in the realm of art while still holding the grim guns of war and feeding and nursing the wounded. To see this same theatre making its allotted production each month under the anxious and uncertain moments of revolution is signal to bow before its indomitable spirit and to yield all honor to that portion of the Russian people which is determined to save for the world from the ruins of its political estate the beauty and the imagination which it has found and cherished. The first production at the Kamerny in December, 1914, was the great Hindu classic, " Sakuntala ", by Kalidasa. The translation was made by Constantin 137 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Balmont, one of Russia's leading contemporary poets. The setting was designed by Pavel Kuznetsoff, whose work is most often exhibited with the futurists and the post-impressionists. The same artist was respon- sible for the scenery of Synge's " The Playboy of the Western World ", which joined the Hindu drama later in the same month. Evidently, considerable work had been done on the repertory of the theatre before it opened its doors, a fact which is characteristic of Russian thoroughness in matters of art; for in Jan- uary, 1915, the second month of the first season, two more productions were made : " Life Is a JDream ", by Calderon, with scenery by N. K. Kalmakoff, and "The Fan", by Goldoni, with scenery by Natalia Gontcharova. The fifth and last production of the first season was made in February, " The Pentecost at Toledo ", by Kuzmin, one of the pantomimes for which the Kamerny has shown a great predilection. The artist Kuznetsoff appeared again as the designer of the scenery. Only four productions were made in the second sea- son, 1915-1916, at intervals of a month, beginning in September. The first of them was " The Marriage of Figaro ", by Beaumarchais, with a special score writ- ten by Henri Forterre and with scenery by Sergei Sudeykin. October brought to the Kamerny stage Remy de Gourmont's " The Carnival of Life ", also with scenery by Sudeykin. France also provided the third bill of the second season, for in December, 1915, Rostand's " Cyrano de Bergerac ", with music by For- The Kamemy, a Theatre of Revolt terre, was added to the repertory. Simoff made the scene designs. Then in January the last production of the season was made, — " Two Worlds ", by Tor Herberg, with scenery by Fedotoff. Shakespeare, England and " The Merry Wives of Windsor " had the honor of opening the busy season of 1916-1917, during which six new pieces were added to the repertory. The Elizabethan whimsy was first played in October, 1916, with scenery by Lyentuloflf. " Thamira of the Cithern " followed in November. This Bacchic drama by ^\nnyensky, with a special score by Forterre, was one of the most successful pro- ductions of the season and it was held over for the following season when I saw it. For it an artist from Kie£F, Alexandra Exter. designed some intriguing scenery, distinctly cubist in its lines and masses. The theatre's second pantomime followed later in the same month, Xovember. It was called " The Veil of Pier- rette " ; it was written by Donanhy and its scenes were designed by the artist Arapoff. I heard it praised in such terms that I am sure it will not be dropped from the theatre's repertory, although it was not revived while I was in Moscow. Sem Benelli's " The Supper of Jokes ", with scenery by Former, followed in De- cember, 1916; Labiche's " Un Chapcau de Paiile cfltalii ", with scenery bj- Fedotoff, in Januar}-, 1917. The last production of the third season, also held over for the fourth year's repertory, was " The -\zure Car- pet ", by Liuboff Stolitsa. Forterre also composed music for this play, and the Armenian artist, Migan- 139 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution adzhian, who is well known and liked in Russia, to-day, designed the scenery for it. England, or rather Ireland, also opened the fourth season at the Kamemy, for the week after the passing of the November Revolution permitted me to make the acquaintance of the Russian theatre, I found Oscar Wilde's hectic tragedy, " Salome ", strongly intrenched in the Kamemy 's repertory. Of that production I shall write in a succeeding chapter, as well as of the later additions to the repertory : Lotar's " King Harle- quin " ; Debussy's pantomime, " The Box of Toys " ; and Claudel's " L'Echange." Back of such a history, as I have said, there must be a definite, conscious theory of the theatre. That theory I finally obtained by dint of much persuasion in the form of a French translation by Forterre of the Russian original formulated by Tairoff himself. I pass it on to America, therefore, in the form of a paraphrase, for a literal translation into a third lan- guage is not likely to be very literal after all. The founders of the Kamemy Theatre were really two: Alexander Yakovlevitch Tairoff, regisseur, and Alice Giorgievna Koonen, leading actress. Since 1914, the directing board has been increased by two : Henri Forterre, a French composer who has resided in Rus- sia almost a decade; and Nikolai Mihailovitch Tsere- telli, who now shares with Koonen the leading acting roles in the theatre. In the minds of Tairoff and Koonen, the new theatre set for itself the task of accomphshing a threefold end : 140 The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt 1. The putting in practice of the theories of a new form of theatrical art. 2. The breaking away from the traditions and the routine which up until the founding "of the Kamerny had held sway over the Moscow theatres and the entire Russian stage, with the exception of the experiments and productions of Meyerhold and Yevreynoif in Petrograd. Concretely, this purpose amounted to a struggle against the manner and the method of the realistic theatre and especially those employed at the Moscow Art Theatre. 3. The expression of the theatrical action in all its fulness, its richness and its wide possibilities. The theatre should not shut itself up in any particular branch of its art, but should keep itself varied and supple and flexible and plastic. Tairoff believed so thoroughly in his theory of the theatre that he was persuaded that the new institution ought to make its way as any necessary thing makes its way just as soon as the public saw that it was fulfill- ing a normal function. The contemporary theatre, as Tairoff saw it, had arrived at an impasse by depend- ing on two opposite poles of expression. On the one hand it was supporting itself on realism and a minute psychology, thus losing the exterior sense of form without which the theatre can not exist. On the other hand it found expression in the objective spectacle, such as the fairy play in all its ramifications and devel- opments, a, form which lost or neglected the intimate emotions. The resulting deadlock was such that it 141 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution was difficult to emerge from it without creating a new form of theatrical art. In this struggle, therefore, between the theatre of psychological sensations, representing the thesis, and the theatre of the fairy spectacle, representing the antithesis, the Kamerny has taken an intermediary position, representing the theatre of synthesis and try- ing to reconcile and ally both emotion and form in a harmonic and indissoluble whole. In order to arrive at this end, the Kamerny has thrown of? the two yokes which so long have enslaved the theatre, literature and painting, and has tried to deliver it from their super- imposed laws which have prevented it from developing according to its own natural laws. Working from these principles and toward these ends, the Kamerny forced itself to create individually the atmosphere of each play.. And in particular it found that it had to repudiate the scenery of two di- mensions, width and depth, and construct the surface of its scenery in three dimensions, width, depth and height, in such a way that these dimensions would be in harmonic relation with the rhythmic and plastic movements demanded by the mise en seine of the play. The quality of height at the Kamerny, therefore, has no leading strings to reality, but is dependent on the emotional and rhythmic effect sought in each scene of each play. The theatricalisation of the theatre, — that is the formula and the theory in brief that presides over the experiments at the Kamerny. 142 The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt This formula and this theory of the theatre were spread among his associates by Tairoff in the role of actor and regisseur and adviser, and as a result, one by one, he has gathered around him the small group which now directs the Kamerny and the larger group which assists in carrying out the conceptions of the directors. The members of the directing board I have named already. In addition to them, the company includes about twenty-five others who all believe in the general artistic and dramatic theories of Tairoff. When it comes to details, however, I found that individual players often disagree with the director and follow lines of original thought and imagination. The group, therefore, is an independent concourse of artists who happen to be in agreement on the guiding impulse of their craft. Realizing the subordinate place of painting in the art of the theatre but at the same time understanding its cooperative importance, a number of Russian paint- ers have contributed their best and most representative work to the productions at the Kamerny. Here they have vied with one another as keenly as they have in their own exhibitions. Among the best known who have helped the Kamerny find its medium are : Alex- andra Exter, whose costume designs for Wilde's " Salome " probably come nearer than any other single contribution to accomplishing the unique purpose of the theatre; Sudeykin, Kuznetsoff, Gontcharova, Kal- makoff, Lyentuloff and Miganadzhian. Fulfilling the line of conduct it has traced for itself, 143 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution the Kamemy has not stopped with dramatic art in the accepted sense, but it has gone on into the study of gesture and pantomime in the belief that in this latter art there is an opportunity to place in strong and effec- tive relief with the greatest persuasive power all the nuances hidden in the theatrical art. This it does by making the actor acquire the emotional gesture, really inseparable in drama from the word, but lost little by little in these latter years. According to these meth- ods, three pantomimes have been presented at the Kamerny: "The Pentecost at Toledo", by Kuzmin; " The Veil of Pierrette ", by Donanhy and " The Box of Toys ", by Debussy. The position of music in this newly conceived theat- rical art has been largely developed and made conscious by Forterre. In the words of the composer himself, " Music has hitherto been represented in the dramatic art as a dynamic element, intended to strengthen more or less the dramatic situation. This function has now been replaced by a rhythmic and melodic element which, allying itself to the gestures of the actor, aug- ments the expression by the persuasion of the rhythm and the melody." Such a use of music in the theatre was first made by Ilya Sats who composed the jolly, elfin score for the original production of " The Blue Bird" at the Moscow Art Theatre. Forterre has taken up the task where Sats left it at his death a few years ago and has carried it to interesting and some- times surprising lengths in the most recent of the Kamerny productions. The results obtained are note- 144 The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt worthy in the sense that the pubUc when it sees a piece played does not often take into account that the musical element mingles itself in the dramatic element and that without it, according to the principles of Tairoff, the dramatic movement itself is impossible. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this same public is deeply even if not consciously moved and influenced by the music as it is used at the Kamerny. Just as a definite theory underlies an institution's history, so an individual imagination underlies every theory. In the Kamerny, therefore, everything leads back to the imagination and the personality of Alex- ander Tairofif. The guiding head of Russia's most revolutionary theatre is still very young — only thirty- three — and he entered the theatre more or less as an afterthought, since he studied for the law as a pro- fession. He has reached his present position, there- fore, in a very few years. His first experience in the theatre dates back only to 1912 when he abandoned the law and acted and served as manager in a cabaret known as The Stray Dog in Petrograd. Later in the same year he founded and managed the Theatre Mobile, a travelling dramatic company playing reper- tory and resembling our own travelling road companies in its business arrangements. With its excursions into every corner of the empire, however, it was a new departure and attracted considerable attention to its young regisseur. A year later saw Tairoff at the head of the newly founded Free Theatre in Moscow and still another year at the head of the Kamerny Theatre 145 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution when the parent institution split into two organ- izations. Alexander Tairoff is a gentle spirit, a man of simple, sympathetic manner. In defense of his theories, how- ever, he becomes as pugnacious as the legal profession for which he was trained would ever demand. In stature he is small, in complexion dark, with a round face, regular features and a sensitive mouth. Owing to his stature he looks far more at home in his trim military uniform than he does in the ever-present Russian cutaway. He is a tireless worker, and one production is hardly safely before the public view when he is hard at work in conferences and rehearsals for the next one. As usual with a stage director, his real qualities come out in rehearsal when he enters into the work of each of his actors with such sympathy and such understanding and yet with such a clear-cut conception of what he wishes to attain that the experi- ence is one of great stimulation both to director and actor. I don't believe there is a member of the Ka- merny company who wouldn't turn handsprings aroimd the stage until exhausted if Tairoff bade him. The most intense and the most gifted and at the same time the most simple artist of the entire group is Alice Giorgievna Koonen. To her more than to all the other members of the acting staff put together is due the success the Kamerny has had with the public. Through her the Kamerny family tree reaches back to the Moscow Art Theatre and Stanislavsky, — the institution and the man which seem impossible to 146 The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt escape wherever you go in the Russian theatre. Koo- nen was a pupil in the school of the Art Theatre prior to the founding of the present Studio theatres of the Art Theatre. Her first important role on the public stage was Mytyl in the original cast of Maeterlinck's " The Blue Bird " in 1908. She was bom of Belgian parents, a fact which gives singular interest to her participation in the first performance on any stage of the f eerie of the great Belgian playwright. Anitra in Ibsen's " Peer Gynt " was another important role she played under Stanislavsky in 1912. Her acting ideals and her theory of the theatre, however, did not find sympathetic surroundings at the Art Theatre and so when the Free Theatre was founded in 1913 she went to it as its leading actress. There she played the role of Plum Blossom in the first Russian production of " The Yellow Jacket." At the Kamerny her most strikingly successful work has been done in " Sakun- tala ", " The Veil of Pierrette " and " Salome." In appearance and manner off stage she is diffident and retiring. In the theatre, however, she displays an astonishing breadth of method, a vivid sense of char- acterization and a sweeping, devastating passionate power that rises to its full height in the richly chal- lenging role of the Hebrew princess in the Wilde tragedy. The first impression is that her voice with its rich cadences and its throbbing emotional qualities is her greatest possession. To see her in pantomime, deprived of the use of that instrument, however, is to realize that her instrument is her entire body and that 147 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution she has as complete control of its rhythmic power as she has of her voice. The Kamemy would not be complete without the genial and lovable Forterre. I think probably he did well to come from his native Paris, where he was a student in the Conservatory, to his adopted home in Russia. Together with the French industry and savoir faire, he has the simple, childlike soul of the Russian artist, lacking almost altogether the sophisti- cation which is Paris. He told me one day that he had a far greater belief in the ability of the Russian peasant to understand and create a great art than in the French peasant, because the Russian peasant has an international soul, and I am not sure that he was not unconsciously describing his own imagination. At the Kamemy, Forterre is supreme in the field of music which plays so important a part in the pro- ductions of this theatre. Since the beginning of the second season he has arranged the score of practically every piece that has been played and for a number of them he has written original music embodying the principles which Tairoff has set forth and with which he is in complete accord. He has not limited his work of composition to the theatre, though, for he has had numerous pieces performed at symphony orchestra concerts, among which the best known are : " Dream ", " The Perfumes of Happiness ", " Man " and " The Music in the Sky." In appearance there is something in him resembling William Jennings Bryan, but For- terre's features are more finely chiselled. I shall never 148 The Katnemy, a Theatre of Revolt forget a glimpse I had of him one afternoon on a platform high up in the fly gallery rehearsing the theatre orchestra with every ounce of his being, even up to the curling black hair that probably suggests the Nebraskan. The fourth member of the directing board of the Kamemy is Nikolai Mihailovitch Tseretelli, a yoimg actor whose work arouses warm sympathy at times and unwilling antagonism at others. Like Koonen, he was a student of the school of the Moscow Art Theatre but never played an important role there. His entire career has been imfolded on the stage of the Kamemy. In stature he is rather tall and his height is thrown into even greater relief by a very spare figure. I am still wondering whether it is not this tendency to physical awkwardness which interferes at times with his serious work. Certainly it is this quality which fits him so well for grotesque roles such as that of Harlequin in the commedia dell' arte. He has much yet to learn, especially in the control of a powerful voice, but he is no less tireless than his peers and preceptor and he is bound to improve much in the next few seasons. There are many others who bring individual gifts to the Kamemy's ensemble. Boris Ferdinandoff stands out especially from among them, for in addition to acting with a fine simplicity and spirit, he is an artist, too, and has designed the scenery and costumes for two productions. No record of the Kamemy would be complete with- out a word regarding the cormection with its destinies 149 The Russian Theatre Under the Revoluiion of Salzmann, the greatest mechanical genius in the lighting of the modem theatre. Leaving Russia and his native Caucasus for lack of appreciation of his great gifts, he went to Germany and at Hellerau, with Jaques-Dalcroze, worked out the lighting of the strang- est theatre in Europe. In September, 1916, he saw the work of the Kamemy for the first time axvA found a group of artists with whom he had sympathy and who in turn understood what he himself was trying to do, and so he gave Tairoff and his company the right to use his system of lighting exclusively in Russia for three years. It is one of the ironies of war and revolution, how- ever, that with this priceless possession the ICamemy is compelled to satisfy itself with the rudest and most primitive of lighting systems. Anj-thing like a mod- em electrical equipment is simply not to be purchased in Russia. The year before the Revolution, the Ka- memy was able to approximate Salzmann's lighting in its original quarters in the Tverskoi Boulevard. Econ- omy and the pinch of war, however, compelled them to seek a more modest home, and consequently I saw them struggling to realize their ideals in a made-over club room. I could hardly believe mj- eyes when after criticising an impleasantly " jumpy " effect in the lights I was taken back stage to see the rheostats, — old oaken buckets of water such as an amateur would rig up in a bam in America ! Better days lie ahead for the Kamemy, however. Some of them they hope to spend in America, where ISO The Kamerny, a Theatre of Revolt they propose to give their vivid production of " Sa- lome ", which will be easily understood in spite of its Russian text, and several of their pantomimes which are above the entangling alliances and enmities and difficulties of language. The Kamerny has not gone by beaten paths. It has broken with routine and tradition. And so it has encountered on its way both on the part of the public and the critics numerous obstacles which have some- times retarded its progress. Still, these obstacles have probably also enabled it to learn valuable lessons. The stubbornness of its ideal has kept the group cheerfully at work through it all, until little by little the theatre has become conscious of its powers and its methods and the public has become accustomed little by little to the new and strange ideals worked out on its stage. With its latest productions, the Kamerny feels that it is beginning to reap the reward of following a path without detour and without compromise. 151 CHAPTER X " Saixjme " IN CxjBisT Vestxike The most impressive and at the same time the most representative production the Kamemy has yet made is Oscar Wilde's tragedy in one act, " Salome." This passionate document may have been produced else- where more extravagantly, with more reclame, more bustle and circumstance and more world-famous names in its cast. In fact, it was so played while I was in Moscow at the Small State Theatre. But surely it has never been produced either as drama or opera with a truer or more fearless appreciation of its passionate import Green bronze is not its keynote at the Ka- memy, to be sure, although Wilde so directed, but then it must be remembered that with all his excursions into the erotic and the exotic, WUde never knew the seduc- tive possibilities of the newer developments in art and their power to interpret passion in drama. " Salome " at the Kamemy is frank and unashamed. But in that respect it does not depart from the formula of the entire Russian theatre or, for that matter, of all the Russian arts. A sense of shame, a sense of mor- bidness is completely missing from the esthetic appre- ciation of the Russian. He takes his art frankly and openly, stepping over and beyond the half -mood, mid- dle ground of the double entendre of the French and 152 ' 'Salome" in Cubist Vesture other Europeans, apparently without ever recognizing its presence. Thus he emerges on the other side, un- fettered by any moral or other entangling considera- tions, with his mind and his imagination and his feel- ings free to react as they will in the presence of works of art. It may be due to the primitive nature of the Russian, still unspoiled by contact with Western civili- zation. It may be due to the Eastern strain in his blood and his own civilization. Whatever the cause, it has given to Russian art and to the Russian theatre, in particular, the originality, the freshness and the im- petus which sent its name arotmd the world and lured me to study it even in the days of terror and revolution. The curtain at the Kamemy is the first omen of what lies ahead, for the auditorium, the reception hall of a remodelled club house, is lacking in distinctive fea- tures. In Russia as everywhere else in the world, the theatre of the secession has to be content with meager physical equipment until it has firmly established itself. The curtain, however, seizes the eye and blots out all other aspects. It is a bold study in the gro- tesque by Alexandra Exter. Black and gold are its dominant colors, although the painter has not slighted the remainder of her palette. Facing inwards at the centre are two monsters — a goat and a leopard, per- haps, standing on their hind feet. Facing outward are two equally eery demons — one a peacock and the other the swan's progenitor, it may be. The rest is a back- ground of distinct post-impressionist or even cubist humors. 153 The Russian Theatre Under the RevoltUion This intriguing curtain parts to the strains of exotic music, half barbarous, half over-civilized, composed principally for the horns by the Czech musician, Jules GiuteL Still another curtain is now disclosed, painted by Exter, who also designed the scenery and the cos- tumes for " Salome." The second curtain is a strong and bold piece of cubist work in this Russian artist's most recent, self-assured style. It sets the aggressive, tragic, passionate keynote of the play, with a sharp pointed sun-like arc in white against a black background and above it to the right three flaming baimers in red — military pennons set dead against the wind. When this curtain, in turn, parts, the stage is dis- closed as the terrace of Herod's palace overlooking the banqueting hall. Several great stone colimms at the right are bathed by the red light from within, and in its glow a group of soldiers is seen dimly disposed at the head and around the foot of a winding staircase. Over to the left on the platform, is the wall of a well in which Jokanaan is confined ; just beyond it is a dark ctirtain, with the moonlight, which Wilde demanded, staring on the scene in the form of a great green disc with streaming beams shooting out from it. At Jokanaan's first speech, "After me shall come another mightier than I ", the curtain with the cubist moon is drawn off to the left, and in its stead a fighter stage reveals two silver streamers of imequal length suspended from above and extending nearly to the ground. The red light, originally seen only at the right, now spreads over the terrace, as the voice of 'Salome" in Ctibist Vesture Salome is heard approaching from the banqueting hall. By quick, sinuous movements and angular, passionate poses the action is carried forward : Salome overcomes Narraboth's misgivings; Jokanaan is brought up from the well, and Salome hurls herself at his white body, his black hair, his red mouth. By every sensuous impli- cation of Wilde's impassioned lines, Alice Koonen develops her conception of the erotic princess, while opposite her Nikolai Tseretelli as Jokanaan depicts the flaming prophet in bold outlines but with finely sympa- thetic shadings. A high peak is reached when the young Syrian, Narraboth, kills himself on the staircase and flings his body headlong between prophet and prin- cess. The taut rhythm is slackened for a moment during the tenderly beautiful lines of the page. But Koonen picks it up again without a break and the con- trast is multiplied beyond Wilde's most eager dreams. Slowly the silver streamers of the moon rise out of sight as the prophet descends into the well to escape Salome's insistent and ardent and ominous : " I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan ! " The light grows redder and then blends into a portentous yellow as Herod, squat and gross, comes out on the terrace. Ever since Jokanaan has departed, Salome has clung infatuated to the cistern wall, holding her body strained against it. The white of her arms cuts an obtuse angle of yearning passion against the black of her robe and against the blue of the curtain behind her. And, in- creasing the passionate tension beyond power of word, her body bends far to one side along the line of one of The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution the arms. Thus she remains immovable during Her- od's ominous vagaries and the disputes of the Jews, and she only grows more tense as the voice of Joka- naan rises from below in denunciation of Herodias. Finally she comes forward, grim and quiet and de- termined, in order to make her bargain with Herod for the dance he implores. When the tetrarch has sworn to give her whatever she asks, her attendants slip out, close to the ground, to bring her the perfumes and the veils. The light turns blood red again, and the blue curtain at the back moves off to the left, leaving a red in its place. Salome now enters, languorously, a red veil gently floating about her head. Her feet move inch by inch, her body hardly at all. The first veil descends gradu- ally to the floor. The air underneath it buoys it up an instant and then the attendants stealthily draw it aside, as the second veil, red as well, falls from Salome's shoulders. Now the princess increases the tempo of the dance, pulls a green veil from about her breast, and sinks suddenly to the floor. Slowly, sinuously, she rises again and her whole body loses itself in the dance. Again and again she faces the well, rushing at it with a fury and a swiftness that lash the beads of her skirt against its sides, and then turning away from it as violently. She tears the fourth veil from her breast and the rhythm becomes quieter and more regular. A slow, free dance of ecstatic joy now carries Sa- lome from one side of the terrace to the other, first toward Herod and then toward the well. The dance 156 "Salome" in Cubist Vesture becomes wilder and faster, around and around, with the beads of the skirt lashing the well again in frenzy. Madly up and down she rushes, bending her body in an impassioned arc first at the well and then toward Herod. From her waist she pulls the fifth veil as if it were a part of her body. And then as she hurls her- self at the well for the last time and wrenches the sixth from her body, the lights vanish except for a torch or two which throw the tense and ardent form of the prin- cess into sharp silhouette. Even the torches now are smothered, as the music of the dance dies away. When the lights return, Salome is fastening about her a gold and black robe and her attendants are replacing her headdress. The passion which has satisfied Herod and quick- ened the blood of every one in the audience rests now without yielding its tension while Salome, hands above her head, demands her reward, — the head of Joka- naan. The entire court takes part instinctively in the movement. Quiet now but with throbbing body, Salome dominates the scene even more profoundly than she did in the dance, while Herod offers her his riches and pleads with her to yield her terrible purpose. One feels that it can not hold thus much longer when the tetrarch weakens and the ring from his finger is sent below with Naaman. A step at a time Salome ad- vances toward the well. Over its edge she peers, im- patient, insistent, restless, feverish. There is a sicken- ing click of steel against stone, but she misinterprets it and her back is turned when Naaman's black arm IS7 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution rises above the curb of the well with the head of Joka- naan under a red veil on the charger. Wheeling and facing her reward, Salome reaches for it, kisses it and then revolts from it, placing the charger on the edge of the well. She turns toward it again, though, crouching close to the ground and facing it with her upturned head just on a level with it. Still addressing it in Wilde's maddeningly sensuous lines, she rises, holding it above her head while the blood from it seems to drip from the charger on her face and into her mouth. Fascinated by it, she takes it slowly down with her until she reaches the floor. There she bends over it, still speaking to it and moving restlessly about as if the body of Jokanaan were still there with its severed head. Again she rises, holding the charger above her head, and the picture seems even more ter- rible now with the repetition, for there is something awesome and triumphant in her attitude. Still again she bends low with the head. When halfway down, the charger drops and rolls away and Salome holds the head itself close to her body. Kissing it again and again, she covers it beneath her until the soldiers at Herod's command move forward to smother her under their shields. As they bury the mad princess from sight, great black streamers drop from above and blot the scene from view and the curtains in turn close them from sight. The fundamental principles of cubism are translated into the language of theatrical production by several interesting means in the Kamerny interpretation of 158 'Salome" in Cubist Vesture " Salome." Cubism as a manner of artistic expression in painting has to do with two dimensions and a fixed result. Cubist sculpture adds a third dimension and in its most successful instances becomes that much more interesting, but it is still dealing with static results. Cubism in the theatre, though, must adapt itself to the essentially plastic nature of the theatre, and I was not sure, until I saw " Salome " at the Kamerny, whether it would become more or less expressive in undergoing this sea-change. The fact that it readily yields to the exigencies of the stage will undoubtedly give it a new impetus as a manner of expression in the world of art. The curtain and the scenery, of course, afford the first indications that the production is cast in the cub- ist mold. In the former especially and even in the latter, Exter is at home in her media. When she reaches the costume designs, her plates, from which the accompanying illustrations were taken, were also fa- miliar ground. The realization of the cubist effect in the actual costumes, though, must have been a far different problem. That problem, however, was solved satisfactorily and by very simple means. The natural folds of the garment are emphasized and compelled to adapt themselves to the cubist design of the artist. Not only the folds themselves, therefore, but their nor- mal shadows, cast from one fold to the other, and ab- normal shadings painted or stamped to exaggerate the shadows — all these means bring about the desired results with striking force and simplicity. The last important means, of course, is the strict 159 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution rhythmic control of the human body. Strange to say, this revolutionary mode of expression, reaching out to a new freedom, brings greater results in controlling the entire scenic picture than all the strictures of the old stage ever thought of doing. An actor could slip out of the picture in the old days without any but the keenest eye consciously detecting his fault. In such a production as that of " Salome ", each actor is so viv- idly a part of the entire picture that his least lapse is readily detected. Much more interesting than this re- sult, however, are the endless possibilities revealed in the expression of emotion by this new and exaggerated school of gesture. True to the nature of cubism, it is angular and vividly picturesque in its static moments, — moments which it seems constantly to be trying to attain, only to release them and work toward a new moment through intermediary movement. This in- termediary movement in " Salome " is often sinuous and graceful. The entrance of the princess, her dance and her orgy with the head of Jokanaan prove that. And of course it throws the static islands into very strong and stirring relief. Probably the nearest ex- ample America has seen of this use of the body in the drama is also Russian, — the bas-relief effect of the dancers in " The Afternoon of a Faun ", as the Diag- ileff Ballet presented the Debussy interlude. " Salome " at the Kamerny is not a one-role play, except as Wilde himself made it so. Nevertheless, Koonen's picture of the princess is such a masterpiece in impassioned action that she towers far above the i6o t 2 z 3 ■A a f- o ALICE GIORGIEVNA KOONEN AS SALOME IN THE CUBIST PRO- DUCTION OF OSCAR WILDe's TRAGEDY AT THE KAMERNY THEA- TRE, MOSCOW "Salome" in Cubist Vesture rest in the cast. Greatly equipped in natural ways, she knows either by rare instinct or long study how to use her gifts most effectively. For instance, she has a small body as lithe as a cat's which she can send mount- ing above every one around her, much as Nazimova used to do with such vivid and honest effect before she had forgotten the tutelage of Pavel Orlienieff, with whom she first played in America. Koonen's voice also is soft and supple and seductive, and Wilde's hot imagery fairly flames from her lips and her tongue. At the same time she possesses a keen sense of aristoc- racy, and when her Salome is most naked in the speech of her tongue and of her body, she is still the princess. I think it is this austere attitude toward the passions which saves the Kamerny " Salome " for tragedy. Tseretelli as Jokanaan and Ivan Arkadin as Herod, of course, share the chief remaining burden of the play. Both of them are actors of imaginative power and earn- est sincerity. Tseretelli, especially, possesses a richly sympathetic personality, while Arkadin's greatest gift seems to be a trenchant mastery of the grotesque. The former, however, could well dispense with his excess of voice at times, particularly in such a small audito- rium as that of the Kamerny. The fault tends to ob- literate the shadings which his characterization would otherwise have. It is interesting to see that he makes Jokanaan a highly strung human being, sensitive to passion as are other men, but controlling his emotions and consciously turning them into the hard mold of the ascetic and the prophet. His Jokanaan knows i6i The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution what Salome could be to him, but although knowing, he still repels her. Arkadin's Herod would be more effective if the actor would vary his rhythm a little, for its tense and ominous obsession becomes monotonous in the course of the play. A little shading here and there would multiply its highly picturesque qualities. Only one or two others make individual impressions. Boris Ferdinandoff as the young Syrian captain of the guard, Narraboth, cuts a clean white flame through the opening scene of the play. Ratomsky as the Cap- padocian, and others, especially those who play the Jews, achieve striking results in cubist movement and posture. And Mihail Mordkin, of the Ballet, is pres- ent impersonally as director of the Dance of the Veils. It might well seem that " Salome " played thus frankly and thus sensuously would be revolting or at least emotionally oversatiating. But there is some- thing about the honesty, the sincerity, the singleness of purpose of producers and players that keeps their interpretation free from anything but the most aus- tere tragic reaction. They have achieved tragedy not by restraint but by self-effacing tmrestraint. There is no audience out in front as far as producers and play- ers are concerned. There is not even the audience of Herod's court on the stage. Salome is dancing only for Herod who sees and for Jokanaan who does not see. The entire performance is intensely impersonal and at the same time hotly and passionately intimate, — a paradox which is possible only with artists and with audiences who view their art honestly. 162 CHAPTER XI A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny Judged by the first month's repertory at the Ka- merny, the exclusive forte of this theatre was the erotic. After the cubist curiosities of " Salome " came the Bacchic abandon of " Thamira of the Cithern " and the more subdued passions of another tragedy, " The Azure Carpet." Perhaps that is not so strange, after all. The newer forms of art are nothing if not in- tense. And passion is intense. Therefore, by alge- braic axiom, the newer forms of art are passionate. The exotic and the erotic are congenial companions. By the holidays, however, the repertory began to broaden in range in accordance with the promise of the Kamerny's previous history. " King Harlequin ", Lotar's tragi-comedy, was presented in extreme cubist guise in the spirit of the commedia dell' arte, — as dis- passionate and objective a piece of make-believe as a Puritan could demand. In January, Debussy's pleas- ant little pantomime, " The Box of Toys ", was ready, as unconcerned with sex and passion as the Tin Soldiers in its quaint cast of characters. Paul Claudel's " L'Echange " followed toward the end of the season, an involved quadrangle of the affections, but symbolic and mystic and austere rather than fleshly. Tairoff 163 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution knows as well as any one that the mental and emotional abstraction which he is seeking in the theatre is a mood of many hues, and his taste is broad enough to compre- hend most of the spectrum of the imagination. Although less personally passionate than the Wilde tragedy, " Thamira of the Cithern " is more imperson- ally erotic than any of the plays in the Kamemy reper- tory. In fact, this three-act drama by Innocent Ann- yensky is a Bacchanale in the entire Greek sense of the word. While its specific theme is one of passion — the passion, even, of a mother for her own son — this theme is almost overshadowed and enveloped by the warm joy in the body which hovers close in the fore- ground throughout the play and breaks through espe- cially in the choral interludes. I know of no country but Russia where this play could be so interpreted to- day with simplicity and . evident cleanliness of mind. The ancient Greek and the modern Russian come very close to each other at times. The scenic background, which remains unchanged through the play, has a certain austerity and dignity combined with a passionate symbolism which at once links the cubist formula with the Greek spirit. The design is in the late cubist vein of the artist, Alexandra Exter, who created the scene and costumes for " Sa- lome." A bank of steps in the centre is flanked in the foreground on the right by another tier of steps, lead- ing up to the door of the musician, Thamira, and on the left by a group of massive cubist rocks. Further back the space at the sides is taken by other rock masses 164 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny with tall round tapering pillars rising from among them to the sky. The play opens in the gray light of dawn, with a flute quality in the music by Forterre. Ariope has come seeking the home of her son, Thamira, whom she abandoned in childhood and who has come to this se- 'cluded spot to be alone with his music. In his ab- sence, she throws herself prostrate on the doorstep. The light now becomes red by slow degrees, and down the steps and into the enclosure a chorus of Menads staggers. A slow, tortuous song accompanies their dance which takes them weaving, half-reeling, up and over and down the steps until they form a snake-like circle reaching from the top of the steps to the base. Bare arms linked in bare arms and moving restlessly but slowly in waves around the circle and back, pro- duce a vividly sensuous effect. As song and prayer near an end, a sense of relaxation comes over them all, and the circle sinks on the steps, still holding hands. With their heads to the sky, eyes half -closed, and the leader in the centre, a hint of a flower design is held for a moment. But only for a moment. For they have discovered Ariope and scatter in fear. Ariope listens to the min- gling sounds of Thamira's music in the distance and the voices of the Menads calling to one another from be- hind the rocks. The light shifts backward and for- ward from a major to a minor until she enters the house, and then it sinks into the gray-green of dawn for an instant, only to color up into a high yellow i6s The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution at the entrance of Thamira. He has seen Ariope entering his home and he is crossed. The mountains are no place for a woman. When she emerges and approaches him, he repels her, even when she proves her parenthood. He lives only for his music. No human love must cross his ambition, — neither the love of woman nor of father or mother. Rousing his in- terest by telling him she knows a way to bring him close to the gods of music, she grasps him as only a woman can hold a man. On the instant, he under- stands, throws her off, cries that mothers can not love like that, and with a leap he is lost among the rocks. The second act begins again under a gray-green light. The Menads from among the rocks on each side weave in to the left until they gradually half en- circle the prostrate form of Ariope. They are still a single quivering group by the joining of outstretched arms, — a rope of arms, sinuous and never quite still, plastic and passionate. This time, although they are startled, they remain and talk with Ariope, asking her who are her gods. " My son is my god ! " she re- plies. The hum of violins now yields to an insinuating mu- sic and Silenus the Satyr prances in from among the rocks. In a kind of animal urge, the Menads all bend toward him in welcome. A moment later two pro- teges of Silenus hop in from the right, — the Satyr of the Azure Ribbon and the Satyr of the Rose Ribbon. They are grotesque children, restless and angular, quick and animal-like in their movements, and when the 166 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny Menads try to catch them they gambol out of reach among the rocks. Ariope begs Silenus to help her ful- fill her promise to Thamira to bring him close to the muses, but he says that all he can do is to arrange for a contest between Thamira and the goddess of music. Ariope leaves, filled with fear that Thamira will be won away by the goddess. The light heightens into yellow as Thamira descends from his home and hears from Silenus of the proposed contest and the goddess. " If I win, I will marry her," the musician declares, taking his harp and playing it better than ever before. Ariope has been listening be- hind a rock. Emerging, she prays to the other gods that Thamira may lose the contest. As she prays, the lights at the front are extinguished and her figure on the steps, arms high above her head, stands clear cut against the lighter background. As she finishes her prayer, the lights shift frantically from one color to another until the curtain hides the scene from view. In an intense red light the third act opens, with the Satyrs, almost a dozen of them, popping out from be- hind the rocks or up and over them. Gasping and grunting and squealing in animal joy, they strike mad postures at one another, with extremely active legs and dwarfed arms. In the distance they hear music and the song of women, and each of them tastes it in ad- vance through his whole body. Suddenly one Menad leaps over a rock and a Satyr hops over her and drags her around while others lay hold of her. Then she seizes cymbals and the two engage in a wild reel, dis- 167 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution appearing among the rocks. Another Menad is lifted from the ground and hurried off by the rest. There is an interval, and then one by one the Satyrs stagger back, sated and exhausted. One by one, too, they sink weary and spent on the rocks until they form a worm- like mass with arms and legs intermingled. As Ariope returns, the Satyrs awake and scatter behind the rocks with just a head appearing here and there. Thamira, also, returns and tells his mother that he has given up the contest, for he realizes that even if he won he could not marry the goddess and at the same time devote his whole life to his art. The Satyrs tell him that there are other joys in life and that one man must love one woman. The musician now addresses his harp and tries to play it. But his gift is gone ! In dismay, he hands it to Silenus, thinking that something is wrong with the instrument. But Silenus brings perfect harmonies from it. Thamira turns on his mother, suspecting her of interfering with his gift, but from the left in a ghostly light the Shade of his father Philemon pro- nounces sentence on mother and son. In addition to losing his gift of music, Thamira will become blind as punishment for his too great ambition, while Ariope will be turned into a bird for loving her son as no mother should love. Around the Ghost the Satyrs dance, approaching it with impatient animal move- ments, but it is heedless of them and retires slowly, silently, behind the great rock at the left. Thamira, who has gone off in despair, now returns sightless, — a 168 o z a ^^ ■ji < A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny pitiable figure. The voice of Ariope as a bird reas- sures him and tells him she and Philemon will be with him always; a ghostly hand reaches out from behind the rock to prove that its presence is near ; and the old slave comes out to guide the stricken artist to his lonely home. " Thamira " is not a great play and if conventionally interpreted it would probably drag interminably. The drama of its story is meagre and its lines are verbose. But under the treatment accorded it at the Kamerny, it takes on a peculiar interest, revealing drama of great sensuous power in its choral interludes and keeping the senses all alert with the plastic use of the human body and the lighting and the music. Forterre's music has an insinuating, sensuous color- ing and is written in the curious middle mood between animal joy and human sophistication. The acting, too, partakes of this fantastic cross which the Greeks discovered and around which they built the best of their art. I know of nothing on the modern stage more truly Bacchic, — not even the glorious abandon of the Glazunoflf Bacchanale as Pavlova and Mordkin danced it. It is the chorus which builds the success of " Thamira of the Cithern." Working in a close har- mony but with great individual freedom, it creates a constantly changing picture as varied but as continuous as the restless surface of the sea. No one in America except Maurice Browne with his Greek chorus at the Chicago Little Theatre has understood so well the su- preme importance of this function of the drama. 169 The Russian Theatre Under the Resolution "The Azure Carpet", a study in passion in a sub- dued minor key, is the work of Liuboff Stolitsa, one of the comparatively few Russian women playwrights. It is written in verse in three acts and tells the story of the Khan Uzbek and his tragic love for the beggar girl, Mnever. My respect for it grew with acquaint- ance. The first time I saw it was the evening after the vivid " Salome ", and I had the feeling that " The Azure Carpet " had been rained on and the colors had faded and run together. Later, however, I found that I had seen Florence after Venice, and Florence had its own charm, less obtrusive and more insinuating. The mood of " The Azure Carpet " is to be found in Araby or Persia or the Caucasus somewhere be- tween day and night, either at the twilight or the dawn of passion. " Salome ", of course, is midnight under an erotic moon. The mad curtains of the Kamemy part to reveal a gossamer landscape of the dreamy East, painted in the mild hues of early dawn by the artist, Avagim Miganadzhian. Snow-capped moun- tains, with strange trees bent into tortuous shape by an unseen wind and ominous of tragedy, form the back- ground. From that point forward, successive cur- tains with designs in softened Oriental colors lead the eye outward to a fountain in the centre of the Khan's garden and to the wall which bounds it on the left. The scene is like nothing so much as the picturesque garden scene designed by the Toensfeldts for the first act of Lady Gregory's " The Golden Apple " at the St. Louis Little Playhouse in 1917. 170 A Bacchande and Some Others at the Kamerny A plaintive processional, composed by Forterre, opens the play, and the women of Uzbek's harem file in and kneel before the fountain shrine. Their quar- rels and jealousies reveal the restraint of the life they lead. A moment after they are gone, the full-voiced song of one of plebeian birth sweeps in on the wind from outside the garden. There is something primitive, common, and yet independent in its tones that hardly prepares one for the beauty of the beggar girl. On a perch on the wall with her flowers, she muses frankly on the freedom of her life and her satisfaction with it all. Meanwhile, the Khan Uzbek has entered his garden. He stands listening to her rambling philosophy but soon approaches her. Although he tells her who he is, she shrinks away. Finally, though, she yields after Uzbek has promised that she will be as free as the winds if she will become his wife. With her he now sits in state while the royal counsellors discuss the dis- position of the beggar girl. One urges Uzbek to im- molate her on the stake, another to cut off her hands, but the chief counsellor perceives the Khan's affection for the girl and shrewdly urges him to accept her as a wife. An Oriental bazaar, rich and sensuous in color and costume, with the booths set hot and close together, t is the scene of the second act. An insinuating rhythm pervades the seductive singsong of the beggars and the merchants in the bazaar, and above its cadence the counsellors tell of the hanging gardens which the Khan 171 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution is building at Mnever's request and the wonderful azure carpet on which she will dance. A slave dealer with a young and handsome Christian captive, Gyaur, enters the market place, and soon afterwards Mnever herself comes to the bazaar. Instantly, she is at- tracted to the youth, buys him and with him enters one of the booths. She is fascinated with him because of the freedom of his spirit in spite of the bondage of his body. Discovery follows close upon her, however, for the eunuch and the heralds and then the wives and finally the Khan himself trace her to the booth. Alone with Uzbek, she insists that Mahomet has decreed kindness for every one, asks for mercy, protests her love for him and begs passionately for him to kiss her, defying the Mahometan conventions. She has to be content, though, with a kiss on the hand from the Khan. A series of curtains in softly blending colors leads outward to the proscenium at the beginning of the third act. Gyaur tells Mnever he must leave, but she pre- vails upon him to remain for the disclosure of the azure carpet that evening. With auspicious ceremo- nies the hanging gardens are revealed, but Mnever has lost her interest in the azure carpet. Urged by the Khan, she mounts the terrace, but calls for Gyaur to come and play for her. Suddenly, she breaks from her dance and embraces Gyaur, and on the instant an arrow from the bow of one of the heralds pierces the slave's heart. Still, Mnever clings to him passionately, cry- ing out that the kisses of a youth are better than those of an old man even though the youth be dead. The 172 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny herald had meant to strike down Mnever instead of Gyaur, but Uzbek completes the tragedy, for he rushes up on the terrace, plunges a knife into the beggar girl's breast and drinks a cup of poison to follow her into the Mahometan paradise. Koonen overtops the rest in her acting of the role of Mnever. The most interesting feature of her per- formance is the note of commonness, of plebeian birth, which pervades her whole conception. As Salome, she is the high-born princess. Refinement is instinct in every movement of her body, — a passionate, sensuous refinement, it is true, but a passion and a sensuousness subtly expressed. As Mnever, subtlety gives way to frankness, and the comparison affords a striking in- sight into the emotional and psychological range of this fascinating player. " King Harlequin " in itself affords Tairoff some ex- cuse for interpreting it as a cubist commedia dell' arte, for the play-within-a-play characters of Harlequin and his comrades are figures from such an environment. The extension of their mood to all the other personages of the drama, however, is a gratuity on the part of the producer whose boldness is rewarded by the transfor- mation of a rather ordinary sentimental tale into an in- genious bit of knowing gesture. I saw the same play under the title, " The Fool on the Throne ", at the Theatre Nezlobina, one of the less distinctive and less important of Moscow's many playhouses, and there as a conventional, realistic production it revealed all its inherent dullness. At the Kamerny, however, sophis- 173 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution tication has discounted sentimentality and has all but obliterated it by subordinating it to the amiable artifi- cialities of the harlequinade. In the original, the fig- ures of the Queen and the Princes and all the courtiers and ministers of state are semi-pasteboard. Tairoff revivifies them by making them all pasteboard. A rigidly cubist curtain follows the freer cubism of the house curtain and prepares the eye for the first set- ting, a throne room with an uncomfortably stifif and royal chair planted on a huge blue block to which steps lead up between over-solemn pillars of white. The King is near unto death and Queen Gertrude has re- turned from monastic exile only to find the Genoese, her own people, as enemies at the gates and her son Boemund reckless of his responsibilities and consorting with Harlequin and his careless crew. The clown, though, is jealous of the Prince, for they both love the gentle Columbine. Sometimes, Harlequin says to her, he feels like a king himself and sometimes like the lowest mortal in the world. Of a sudden, jealousy flames into blows and in the struggle Harlequin throws Boemund to his death over a cliff back of the throne. Descending out of sight, he reappears in all the habili- ments of the Prince. He, the actor, the clown, will play the role of Prince. He will play the role of King, too, for after a brief interval the sombre percussion of the death march tells of the passing of the King. Now that Harlequin is gone, Columbine knows that she loved him. The whole band is lost without its leader. Pantaloon, disconsolate, comes to the King 174 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny for comfort. Did he love Harlequin ? asks the pretend- ing King. Well, he hopes Pantaloon will like the King none the less for killing Harlequin. Against the wish of the despondent clown, the King takes him as a ser- vant, makes him swear fealty and secrecy, then seizes him and tells him the truth. The people are eager to crown their new King, and so Harlequin is brought before Queen Gertrude. Blind though she is, she knows that Harlequin is not her son, but she also knows that he has saved the country from disaster and, by his leniency, her own people from destruction. And so she crowns him while the crowd hails him King. The business of being a king is irksome. Peasants come, begging restoration of what they lost in the war. " But you need everything for your palace and your throne," insists Tancred, uncle and minister of state. " These are my throne," Harlequin replies, pointing to the peasants. The King refuses, too, to sign any de- crees of execution. " Not I but the power of my name is King," says Harlequin. Tancred already suspects the truth and remarks that the King is playing very well his part. Harlequin sends for Columbine, but she is inconsolable and she agrees to come to him the fol- lowing night, only to kill him. When she confides her plan to Pantaloon, he is in a quandary but his tongue is tied. Harlequin sends for the players to appear before him and the court. The old clown returns to his mas- ter who clings to him and confesses it is very hard to reign. He will play his old role, says the King, and he will play it well ! 175 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution The first three acts have run their course in almost the same setting. For the fourth, there is a black back- ground. Strange angular lanterns swing from the sky. The throne and the pillars surrounding it are all awry. The actors set their stage before the assembled court and announce their harlequinade. Just as the play is about to begin, with Scapine as partner for the dis- traught Columbine, Harlequin in his own guise and costume leaps down from behind the throne, chases the presumptuous Scapine from the scene and plunges into an improvised drama in which he tells how he killed the King and played his role. It is better to be a good Harlequin, though, than a bad king, so he and Columbine are married, bid the astounded courtiers farewell and depart in the boat Columbine had pre- pared for her own escape before the royal audience realizes that this is truth and not a drama they have been watching. The settings in " King Harlequin " are severely simple, the costumes antic in their grotesquerie. Both are the work of Ferdinandoff, the young man whose playing as Narraboth is so impressive in the first scene of " Salome." He is extremely reticent, knowing only his own language and reserved in the use of that, but he is fine in spirit and imagination. Thus far as de- signer he is a little stiff in his simplicity, but he is likely to do much better work for more worthy mate- rial. None of all his good-natured whimsies in this production is quite so amusing or quite so characteris- tic as Pantaloon's headgear — a kind of cross between 176 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny a college mortar board and Happy Hooligan's tin can. But perhaps I got these implications where a Russian wouldn't ! Those in Moscow who are most irritated by the Kamerny's unconventionality are ready to admit and even to praise the vesture which Tairoff, with the as- sistance of Forterre in the orchestration, of Ferdinand- off in the designs and of Mordkin in the dances, has given to Claude Debussy's jolly pantomime, "La Boite d, Joujoux " or " The Box of Toys." " To dress seri- ous drama in garments men never wore and never will wear is one thing and a very exasperating thing at that," they say, " but it is all very well to deck out thus a children's fantasy." " The Box of Toys ", as pro- duced at the Kamerny, is a kind of Franco-Russian Mother Goose. It is, indeed, sugar cakes for the nursery age and the Kamerny invariably presents it at matinees. But, like " The Blue Bird ", which is al- ways an afternoon host at the Art Theatre, it has subtler pleasures for grown-up children. "The Box of Toys" hasn't as much plot as a musical comedy. The Dolls and the Soldiers and the Shepherds and Polichinelle and Harlequin and the Elephant and all the rest simply come to life, examine each other curiously and with mild satisfaction and then take their places once more in the booth and the box from which they first emerged. There is a hint of a love story between the most beautiful doll and Polichinelle — the kind of love story with its attend- ant jealousies which a child can comprehend — but that 177 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution is all. The rest is simply naive incident and frolic and gesture. The Kamerny's curtain is too eccentric to introduce the innocence of " The Box of Toys ", and so a special curtain is provided, all dotted over with funny little people, one of them standing on his head and the rest trotting around among vari-colored blocks. When it is drawn up, a poster with Debussy's legend for his pantomime is revealed : La Boite a Joujoux Les hoites d joujoux sont des sortes de ville dans les- quelles les jouets vivent comme des personnes. Ou bien les villes ne sont peut-etre que des hoites a joujoux dans lesquelles les personnes vivent comme des jouets. A modified cubism is the manner in which the panto- mime is presented, a cubism which takes its cue from the nursery simplicity of proper toys, — the reaHsm of toyland, in a manner of speaking. One of the most in- gratiating features of the Kamerny's production is the open-eyed wonder which the players of the toys main- tain throughout. Another deft touch is that which directs that arms and legs shall be slightly stiff and awkward. After all, how do you suppose a toy would know the use of these instruments right at first if he came to life! And so when Polichinelle or one of the Soldiers embraces the Doll, his elbows press her arms lightly and his hands protrude behind her. When they kiss, their lips come ever so close but they do not touch. The mysteries of life are mastered but slowly ! 178 A Bacchanale and Some Others at the Kamerny It is a great pity that Tairoff has felt bound by the composer's directions in all their details, for the pro- duction thus inherits one of the worst faults of French pantomime, — the use from time to time of audible sounds characteristic of the action, such as the squeak- ing of the Doll when the Soldier bends her over, or the sharp clapping of the hands of the little children dollies. The fault is on a par with the disturbing smacking of the lips of the excellent actor of the father in " Pierrot the Prodigal " in New York a few seasons ago. Pan- tomime is panto-mime — " all-imitation " — and to in- ject in it even the slightest representative sounds shat- ters the mood in which it is conceived. Such a definite and singular aim as the Kamerny has set for itself naturally excludes from its use many plays which would be hopelessly distorted if poured in its mold. Tchehoff, for instance, and the realistic dramas of Gorky are inconceivable on the Kamerny stage. Claudel's " L'Echange ", however, should have yielded to interpretation by Tairoff, but the Kamerny, fortunately for its future service to the Russian stage, is still in the experimental period, and mistakes, if they are honest, can not harm it. Ultimately, of course, it will find its best service in interpreting plays written especially for its use. 179 CHAPTER XII Here and There in Moscow Theatres One of the most interesting of the experimental stages in Moscow is the Kommissarzhevskaya Memo- rial Theatre, directed by Fyodor Kommissarzhevsky and named in honor of his sister who, though of Polish blood, was acknowledged for years before her death in 1910 as Russia's greatest actress. It was not without a feeling of chagrin that I first visited this theatre, for as an American I could not forget how in 1908 New York failed to wake up in time to the pres- ence of genius in its midst and how Vera Kommissar- zhevskaya returned heartbroken to her native land, thinking that America had rejected her. Of course, it was simply another case of America's tardy apprecia- tion of imexpected, unheralded and vmexplained great- ness, but the memory embarrassed me just the same. The brother of the actress and the director of the theatre, however, soon put me at rest, for he was will- ing to forget the past and anxious to assist me in the task of telling America of his experiments and his achievements. It was early in December, soon after the theatres reopened, succeeding the November Revolution, that I saw the first of Kommissarzhevsky's repertory. I i8o Here and There in Moscow Theatres began on familiar ground, choosing for the first visit a dramatized version of Dickens' " A Qiristmas Carol." I was pleased and my curiosity was aroused, and soon afterwards I saw Sologub's " Vanka the But- ler and Page Jean." Here was Russian comedy done with zest and richness of flavor and freshness of touch. At later intervals I saw " Pan ", by Charles van Lerberghe, and was disappointed; then Aristoph- anes' " Lysistrata ", and I began to lose interest. But shortly before my departure, the theatre regained its original place in my regard through a singularly in- cisive dramatization of one of Dostoievsky's short stories, " A Bad Anecdote." The regisseur evidently had a gift for interpreting human character with sym- pathy and simplicity. The Kommissarzhevskaya Memorial Theatre was founded in Moscow by the brother of the actress in 1914. It was the direct outgrowth of the school of acting and stagecraft which he opened in Moscow in 1910. " The Free School of Scenic Art " he called it, and in the words of his prospectus he set out " to find with his pupils and his artistic friends the new means of artistic and scenic interpretation for new authors, Russian and foreign, and for the classic authors. At the school and the theatre of Kommis- sarzhevsky, the naturalistic ideas of the theatre of Stanislavsky will be completely unknown. It is to be a theatre purely esthetic and theatrical." For four years, then, the director conducted his school and prepared his future actors for their tasks, i8i The Russian Theatre Under the Reoolution In the fourth season of the theatre I saw the school running side by side with it, providing actors from its advanced ranks for the smaller roles on the stage of the theatre. It is the director's policy to advance his pupils as rapidly as they display progress and there is, therefore, an intensity and freshness and rivalry to be seen in many of the productions due to the efiFort of these students to justify their advancement Devel- opment of diction and voice, with instruction in sing- ing to assist the speaking voice; development of the body through plastic and rhythmic exercises; study of the theory of theatrical art; wide acquaintanceship with the literature of the theatre in all countries; improvisation on the stage for the development of emotional technique and imagination and theatrical presence of mind; and finally experience on the stage of the theatre — these make up the chief points in the course of instruction at the school. At his theatre, Kommissarzhevsky has had this prin- ciple for his mise en scene: to achieve a harmony be- tween the interpretation of the actors, the ensemble, the forms and the colors of the scenery and costumes, the music and the light — the harmony between all these and the idea and the style of the dramatic author. With this as the guiding principle, fifteen productions wnth a total of seventeen plays were made in the first four seasons. " Dmitry Donskoi ", a trag- edy by OzyorofF, opened the house in the fall of 1914. A double bill followed, consisting of Moliere's " The Sicilian " and Ostrovsky's " A Family Picture." Then 182 Here and There in Moscow Theatres came the dramatization from Dickens — "A Christ- mas Carol " — which is still a faithful member of the repertory, and the fifteenth-century morality, " Every- man." The first season was brought to a close with the dramatization from Dostoievsky's " A Bad Anec- dote." The second season opened with " Night Hops ", a play by a modem Russian writer, Fyodor Sologub. "The Choice of a Fiancee", by Hoffman; "May Night", by Gogol; and "The Cursed Prince" by Remizoff, another contemporary Russian playwright, made up the new productions of the year 1915-1916. Sologub also opened the third season with his com- edy, " Vanka the Butler." Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Elektra" followed, and then Balzac's " L' Amour sous le Masque." Another double bill rounded out the 1916-1917 season : " The Comedy of Alexei, or God's Man ", by a modem Russian, Kuzmin ; and Leonid Andreieff's " Requiem." In the fourth season the only new productions were van Lerberghe's " Pan " and " Lysistrata " of Aristophanes. The theatre has in preparation Hauptmann's "Hannele"; Wedekind's " The Box of Pandora " ; and Voltaire's " The Queen." The Kommissarzhevskaya Memorial Theatre is a theatre in miniature but it does not give the impres- sion of being cramped. The auditorium, the stage and all the various departments of the institution ex- cept the school, which is across the street in another building, are comprised in the rambling rooms of a large reconstructed dwelling house. The hall seats only 183 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution one hundred and fifty spectators and the seats rise at a comfortable angle. On the stage there is barely pas- sageway at each side, often not that at the back and no loft at all. Much more generous rooms open out to the rear and at the sides for the actors, the painting of the scenery, etc. But it is impossible, without tun- nelling ancient Russian masonry almost as formidable as the walls of Kenilworth castle, to throw them into the stage area. Three devices assist Kommissarzhevsky to achieve interesting results in this bandbox. One of them is his excellent lighting system and his knowledge of how to use light eloquently. There is barely space along the ceiling of the room which has been converted into a stage for the rows of overhead lights. Footlights are absent and the actor approaching the front of the stage is kept in normal aspect by a concealed bank of lights just in front of thfe proscenium top, tilted at an angle to shut off bothersome shadows. Then in almost all of the productions which I saw at the theatre, an extremely fine-meshed gauze screen is stretched taut over the entire proscenium opening. Unless you sit in the front row and are technically curious about the theatre you will probably not notice its presence at all. But it is there, and its effect is to push the actors and the entire scene off into the distance without making the figures smaller. A certain aloofness, a strong sense of objectivity, is the result, a kind of intan- gible and transparent but potent wall, erected between spectator and player. Finally, the use of curtains is 184 Here and There in Moscow Theatres frequent and effective. Many scenes are set with cur- tains at both sides and at the rear with only a piece of furniture or a bit of suggestive wall inserted to indicate the locale. Outdoor scenes are even more effectively presented than indoor, ' a strange thing in the theatre except where the kuppelhorizont solves all the producer's exterior problems. And the result is achieved simply by a very deep false proscenium. Curtains stretched taut at both sides and overhead lead the eye back from the real proscenium to a safe dis- tance. Then there is a vacant space for a few feet, — enough for the movement of the actors. And finally the back curtain, which extends safely out of sight at both sides and above. The actors, of course, play all the way forward under the false proscenium. On this stage " A Christmas Carol " emerged as a series of character studies rather than as a play, for Dickens defies adequate dramatization in Russian as he does in English. By simple devices, the setting is indicated, — high desk and stool for the office, narrow bed and pinched-up fireplace for Scrooge's bedroom, and an ampler hearth and dining table for Bob Cratchit's home. Without doubt, the most successful scene in the production is that in which Marley's ghost appears to Scrooge. Here you forget completely and absolutely the half-sketched setting, as you should do if Kommissarzhevsky's method is to be really suc- cessful. The tinkle of bells merging imperceptibly into the clanking of chains heralds the coming of the ghost, a powerfully suggestive and terrifying and yet i8s The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution a very simple device. An exaggeration that stops just short of the grotesque makes the face and figure of the ghost a picture amply fulfilling the ominous concep- tions which the clanking chains have aroused. And then his piercing cry and the dark which follows, lit only by a small candle with its shivering shadows, bring the scene through an intense course to a decisive conclusion. Its last moments with the ghostly shad- ows recall the like effect gained by Lennox Robinson in his staging of T. C. Murray's " Birthright " for the Irish Players. " Vanka the Butler and Page Jean " is a characteris- tic sample of Russian comedy. It probably could not be presented before a western audience even as properly as one or two of the most outspoken plays in the Kamemy's repertory. With its parallel scenes of French and Russian life as it was lived in the eight- eenth century, it is French frankness with Russian frankness added. The impression exists that Solo- gub attempts to imitate Dostoievsky and there are un- doubtedly scenes and characters in " Vanka " which bear out this contention. " Vanka " is interesting in the first place for its construction. Each of its nine scenes is presented twice, once as the story might have happened in eighteenth-century France and then by contrast as the same story might have taken place in eighteenth-century Russia. One has the strange and not unpleasant feel- ing of reading a chapter of a book in one language and then turning back to its beginning and rereading i86 Here and There in Moscow Theatres it in a translated language. Only here, the translation from the French version of love and life is not literal. In suffering the sea-change into Russian, many details of habit, custom, character and purpose are set forth by the dramatist as very different in his native land. Loyal to it, he brings the play to a conclusion favoring the good and forgiving heart of the Russian in con- trast to the less sympathetic and less human French- man! Vanka is only a nickname for Ivan or John, which, of course, translated into French carries out the com- parison indicated in the title and retained throughout the play. Its first scene merely gives the setting for the story and the characters, a French count, his wife and one of their servants, Jean; and then in the Russian version, a Russian prince, his wife and one of their servants, Vanka. The second scene shows the wife interested in the servant and asking for his ad- vancement, first the French, then the Russian. From the simple curtained interior of these two scenes, the play now moves into the third, a garden, indicated only by a strikingly painted and impressionistic back cur- tain. Here the story skirts the realm of danger, with the promoted servant and the mistress making eyes at each other, and, before the scene closes, stealing from each other the first kiss. The contrast here shows the French Jean and the countess as very intense and los- ing themselves seriously in their passion, whereas the Russian pair seems to act just as if in good sport. Of course, the contrast in manners here as throughout the 187 ^ The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution play adheres to the accepted refinement of the French and the rough and crude heartiness of the Russian. In the fourth scene, the play has reached the bed- room stage of development, and both in the French and the Russian versions runs beyond Anglo-Saxon limits for the dramatic stage and the printed record of it. There is no innuendo, though, simply a frank exhibi- tion of the course of events with the curtain drawn when that course has become unmistakable. Here, too, the intensity of the French manner is contrasted un- favorably by the author with the casual oflfhandedness of the Russian way of doing these things. Jean and Vanka are beset by the other servants in the fifth scene and one after another the girls try to attract his attention. Finally he yields to one and in the sixth scene he is shown drinking with them all and discovered by one who has been rejected and is jealous. The Russian version of this scene is par- ticularly rich in flavor and in character study and brings to mind some of the scenes from Dostoievsky. Dismissal follows in the seventh scene and punishment in the eighth. A fine bit of humor marks the Russian version, for on the way to the beheading, Vanka points out a beggar to his executioners and for a few kopecks induces them to take the poor devil instead of himself to the block! And then comes the final scene — the punishment of the wife. En frangais, Madame Count- ess is chased from the room with a lash by her angry husband. Po Russky, the prince storms and threatens and raves against his wife and then of a sudden opens i88 Here and There in Moscow Theatres his arms for her to come and receive forgiveness. Thus does Sologub pay tribute to the good heart and the forgiving nature of his race. " Pan ", a comedy in three acts by Charles van Ler- berghe, gave promise in its first act, especially in its first quarter hour, of great lyric beauty. In a simple peas- ant home, a group of gypsies is gathered, wild souls whom the peasant has harbored as he would harbor any passer-by. Out through the door is a glimpse of the sea and in through the door float the strains of a super- natural music. Of a sudden. Pan himself springs to life in the room and the gypsy girls all bow down to him as to a god. Immediately, there is a problem in the village and immediately the play becomes a char- acter comedy and even a farce before it is through, losing all its lyric significance and promise. " A Bad Anecdote " is one of Dostoievsky's un- translated short stories, extending over not more than fifty pages. The dramatization has been made in five scenes and it follows the story with extreme faithful- ness. By admirable control of his lights, the pro- ducer brings slowly, stealthily into view the picture of three state councillors or civil generals. Nikiforoff and Shipulyenko are reactionaries of the deepest stripe. Pralinsky professes liberal views. Nikiforoff and Shipulyenko admit that reforms are good but usually there is something naive and childlike and helpless about them. Pralinsky protests his belief in humanity and brotherhood. His opponents fear that great dis- asters may rise from permitting reform to get under 189 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution way. Pralinsky replies with his theory that if you are kind-hearted to those beneath you, they will like you. Liking you, they will believe in you. And be- lieving in you, they will believe in your reforms. When Pralinsky sends for his carriage, the servant brings word that the coachman has gone and left his master to take care of himself. Pralinsky hotly curses the fellow, and his friends, observing the contrast be- tween theory and practice, advise punishment of two hundred stripes with the whip. That, of course, is so exaggerated that Pralinsky sees the point, cools down and says that he will walk home and punish his servant by making him ashamed of himself. The three men have had a little too much to drink and the second scene shows Pralinsky staggering home along a dimly lighted street. The tumbledown build- ings painted on the back curtain are grotesquely dis- torted by the artist, Annyenkoff, as if they were seen through the tipsy eyes of the general. There is music coming from one of the houses in the street, and in answer to the general's question a policeman tells him there is a wedding inside. It turns out that the place is the home of one of the young men who work under Pralinsky in his department. Aha! Here is the op- portunity to test his theories. Will the young man and his guests become frightened if he breaks in on the party? They would ordinarily, he says, but not with him. On the contrary, he will make himself pop- ular by such a course. And so the third scene, in the parlor at Psyeldonim- 190 Here and There in Moscow Theatres off's, brings Pralinsky, still dangerously unsober, into the wedding group. A discolored, distorted back cur- tain with crooked windows painted on it indicates the setting. Confusion, of course, follows his entrance, but the general is talkative, tells how he quarrelled with his friends, how he was left in the lurch by his coach- man, how he started to walk home, how he got into this part of the city, asked about the music he heard, found who lived here and just happened to drop in on them. His own frank and unbosoming manner helps to put them all at their ease. Soon he asks for the bride and when she shrinks timidly from the intro- duction, he gives her some very specific and embar- rassing advice. Little by little the guests regain their confidence and make remarks,- rough, silly and point- less, just as Dostoievsky's characters always do under such surroundings and just as they do in the drab course of everyday life. There is a " scene " with the mother of the girl who has not been invited to the party and who upbraids them for currying favor with the general by having him here. Pralinsky now drifts into a general philosophizing about rebuilding Russia, and one by one they leave him alone and go off to their own dances and sports. The scene closes with the fact beginning to dawn on the general that he is not at all pleased with the familiarity which he has courted from his inferiors. The dining room is the fourth scene with an age- mottled wall and a wry stove painted on it to indicate the locale. One guest is already drunk and another 191 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution and another join his estate until that party is in the majority. Prahnsky has been drinking more, too, and he tells them they are all his friends ; he is the friend of humanity ; through his theories Russia will become a new country. By this time they are not the least afraid of him and they laugh at his notions as if he had intended them as a joke. He does not like this turn of affairs and protests that he has not spoiled their sport. " On the contrary," says a young news- paper correspondent very frankly, " you have spoiled our sport. You have drunk two bottles of cham- pagne and you don't realize how we have had to save to buy such things for our wedding party. Besides, you didn't ' happen in ' at all, but you came deliber- ately, not as a friend of humanity but just to make yourself popular with us ! " Pralinsky is abashed by this, and the grim humor of the scene is heightened by the poor bridegroom, Psyeldonimoff, rushing about from one centre of disturbance to another, trying futilely to keep order and save his employer from insult. The guests are departing by this time and the general, dead drunk, falls helpless on the floor. Psyel- donimoff brings the scene to its conclusion by express- ing his dual fear that he will lose his bride as well as his position as a result of the evening's fiasco. The final scene at the home of Pralinsky next morn- ing shows a table, a chair and a snatch of wall. The general sits by himself, ruminating over the outcome of the night and considering the necessity of resign- ing his post. He will have to change all his ideas. 192 Here and There in Moscow Theatres They were just children's talk. He will be very strict with his inferiors. In signing his papers, he sees one from young Psyeldonimoflf asking to be transferred to another department in order to avoid the awkward and embarrassing consequences of the night before. And the play closes with Pralinsky admitting that his friends were right. " After all," he says, " I didn't hold my own." It is impossible to look upon " A Bad Anecdote " as a defense of reactionary theory and policy on the part of Dostoievsky. The novelist suffered Siberia and the terrors which he has depicted in " The House of the Dead " as a revolutionary of the nineteenth cen- tury. It must be viewed, therefore, as a trenchant and pungent satire on dishonest and insincere atti- tudes of reform. More than that, however, " A Bad Anecdote " has those larger, deeper human signifi- cances which rise above theory and politics and prop- aganda. Characters are painted with those swift strokes displaying the author's insight into human motives, — an insight unparalleled in literature. Fyodor Kommissarzhevsky is a slight man with a reddish-brown complexion. He is intense and nervous in his movements, eager as a boy about his work and almost never resting from it. I found him one of the hardest men in Moscow to run down and one of the most agreeable once I caught him. He was bom in 1882 and made his debut as a rcgisseur and a designer of scenery at the Dramatic Theatre of Vera Kommis- sarzhevskaya in Petrograd in 1908. With his famous 193 The Russian Theatre Under the Revohdion sister, he visited America that same year and was closely associated with her until her death. Then he passed to the Theatre Nezlobina in Moscow as direc- tor, and in 1913 he was engaged at the Imperial Thea- tres in Moscow as regisseur of the companies at the Great Theatre and the Small Theatre. At present, in addition to his own theatre, he is engaged as the chief regisseur of Opera at the Theatre of the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies, formerly known as the Zimina Opera. In addition to his practical work in the theatre itself, he has written two books concerning dramatic theory : " Theatrical Preludes ", and " The Art of the Actor and the Theory of Stanislavsky." Prior to the opening of his own theatre, he had produced for others for the first time on the Russian stage, Moliere's " Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme " , " Turandot ", Goethe's " Faust " and many other plays. At the conclusion of the memoranda concerning his theatre which Kommissarzhevsky gave me, he wrote this paragraph : " During the three years of the theatre, the public of Moscow, accustomed to productions nat- uralistic and imitating ordinary Ufe, has not filled the small hall of the Kommissarzhevskaya Memorial Thea- tre, and it does not have a taste for the productions of the new romantic type. In the press the new theatre has met with a welcome very cold and critical" The frankness which is willing to confess these facts, how- ever, is equal to the task of surmounting them. War and its demoralizing effects have prevented any large part of the public from interesting themselves in the 194 Here and There in Moscow Theatres experimental theatre. When the ruble is going down and the prices of food that may still be bought are going up, the money spent for the theatre will be devoted to the conservative stages or those which have been established long enough that the visitor knows what he will find when he goes. I think Kommissar- zhevsky may be trusted to realize this fact and hold his ground until Russia can devote a leisure ear and eye to those pioneers who are seeking new paths in art. The lighter side of the Russian stage is far inferior to its sober aspects. Musical comedy is a poor, be- draggled waif in comparison with its gay and glit- tering sisters in New York and London and Vienna. There is no Russian Ziegfeld to lure into his gorgeous net the abundant ranks of Russian feminine beauty. The Ballet, perhaps, performs that task as an inciden- tal to its more ambitious functions. Varieties abound in Moscow and Petrograd, but for the most part they lag far behind the London Music Halls and the Amer- ican circuits. One by one under the strain of revo- lution, they dwindled in attendance and snuffed out, until when I left for home there was only a handful remaining. The very stages which would thrive in a time of stress in America and in western Europe yielded to the demand of the Russian nature for the most substantial phases of her art and pastime. When under war and revolution Russia had to give up one aspect after another of her normal life, she kept her theatre to the last. And when she had to surrender I9S The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution a part of that last remaining structure of the elder order, she clung to its most inspiring towers. One figure and one stage stand out against this background of mediocrity. The man is N. F. Balieff, one of the greatest of living clowns, and the stage is his super-cabaret, Letutchaya Muish or The Bat. I never forgave myself for neglecting this antic under- ground retreat and its droll proprietor until my third month in Moscow, but once I found it I had a hard time staying away. Balieff began at the Art Theatre; who didn't, in fact? There he played such divergent roles as that of Bread in " The Blue Bird " and the clerk in Ibsen's " Brand." It is difficult, almost im- possible, to conceive of him in a serious part, until you remember that every Russian player takes his work, whether it be in comedy or tragedy, with the utmost seriousness. Balieff is most serious as artist when he is most ludicrous as entertainer. Naturally, though, the Art Theatre did not give him the widest opportunity for the use of his peculiar gifts. Personality had to be sunk in a role at the Art Theatre, and his whimsical personality is his greatest possession — his personality and his face. I can imagine nothing more disastrous at a funeral than the appearance of that oval, lit by piercing black eyes and traversed by a sensitive mouth. Even in repose, its himior is contagious. A twitch of that mouth, a flash of the eyebrow, and he has told a whole story. He seems to take the greatest delight and I know his audience does when he stands just inside the wings 196 o K -< oi H 'SI Q •x 01 H CC % u a aj <5 s h *■ O <: ^ « M »^ w < 0) « r- ^ o d g !» > V (cq W H < « 33 rfj g; H S] T. >— ( O A H < krH H H ^ « a; o w w v^ K s fc H B Here and There in Moscow Theatres and makes pantomimic comments on a song that holds the centre of the stage. I often felt sorry for the be- witching yovmg singer, for no one paid the slightest attention to her! Before he left the Art Theatre, BaliefiF established Letutchaya Muish as a private circle for Moscow art- ists and players and their friends. Entrance to it was jealously guarded and eagerly sought. That was in 1908, for he was preparing to celebrate his tenth anni- versary about the time I left Russia. This exclusive circle grew, first into a public cabaret where the audit- ors sat around tables during the programme and then into its present form, — a snug and cosy little audito- rium with capacious and bizarre refreshment rooms and a homelike foyer opening oflF it where the long intermissions seem all too short. A winding incline, decorated as if for Hallowe'en, takes the visitor down from the street to these canny caverns under Moscow's largest apartment building. I had not finished with the odd and grotesque mementoes strung along the walls when the eager proprietor bustled me off back stage to see his Ug^ting and mechanical equipment, all in miniature like everything else, including its short and pudgy owner, but the most modem and complete in any Russian playhouse. Only the most expert hands are permitted to touch it, for since the early days of the war it has been utterly irreplaceable in Russia. The method at The Bat is simply the method of Baheff's personality. Everything that reaches the 197 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution public across its stage passes through that prism. Around him he has gathered a group of congenial and sympathetic advisers, including the composer, Alexei Arhangelsky; Ryabtseff, comedian of the Ballet; and Burdzhaloff, of the Art Theatre, but he is the presid- ing genius of the junta. The spirit of The Bat is the spirit of wit and not the spirit of horseplay. Even wit sometimes retires in favor of a surpassing bit of poetic or tragic beauty. A typical programme con- sists of several songs in costume or in character with slight but eloquent backgrounds; a farce or two played with the earnestness of all good farce ; a moment with marionettes ; a scene or a short play from Push- kin or Gogol or Gorky; and, most characteristic of all, an exciting quarter hour in which the host pokes first his easter-egg face and then his chunky body through the curtains and spars with the nimble tongues in the audience, an exciting variation of the monologue in American vaudeville. The most impressive production at Letutchaya Muish while I was in Moscow, and the most unex- pected from the superficial aspects of the regisseur, was that of Maxim Gorky's short play, " Mother." Telling the simple story of a youthful captive taken by the terrible Tamerlane and the successful plea of the boy's mother for his release, this bit of intense drama is far distant from the familiar style of Rus- sia's master playwright of to-day. Balieff presents it between snatches of choral song. After the prelude, the black-robed singers divide to the right and left and 198 Here and There in Moscow Theatres help to frame esthetically as well as physically the vivid and colorful scene and action. Not less picturesque was Balieff's production of Pushkin's short drama, " The Fountain of Bakhchi- Sarai ", with its impassioned Oriental atmosphere. Gogol's story, " How Ivan Ivanovitch Exchanged Words with Ivan Nikiforovitch ", afforded ample in- centive for the irrepressible humors of Balieff's play- ers. Liuboff Stolitsa, author of " The Azure Carpet " at the Kamerny, was represented by a pleasantly cyn- ical tale from the Arabian Nights, " The Mirror of the Virgin." And one of the lesser skits of Tchehoff, " The Entr'acte under the Divan ", was played with much gusto. The Bat is particularly happy and in its proper mood in its frequent snatches and scenes from peasant and historic Russia. And the quaint and stately flavor of the songs and ballads of Glinka rouses an American's wonder why these musical treasures are not oftener heard on our concert stages. Of all Balieff's players, Deykarhanova is the most engaging and the most versatile. From the pleading Mother in Gorky's short drama to a buxom baba sing- ing of the inconvenience of railroad travel under the Revolution is a long step, but she takes it easily and gracefully. Hers is the most incisive gift of charac- terization in the company, and The Bat would indeed be blind without her. Moscow playhouses are many and interesting out- side the superior circle of the Art Theatre, the State Theatres, the Kamerny, the Theatre of Kommissar- 199 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution zhevsky and Balieff's Letutchaya Muish. The system of repertory prevails everywhere, even in the vaude- villes and cabarets, and in each of them three or four plays or programmes of varying merit may be observed each week, with additions to the repertory once or twice a month in the form of new productions or revivals from a previous season. From them a very good impression may be obtained of the seriousness with which the Russian takes his drama, for the fea- ture which distinguishes their work from the superior circle is not their repertory so much as their less thor- ough and less imaginative settings, the inferiority of many of their actors and their lack of a definite theory of the theatre. Nevertheless, many an interesting evening can be spent in their auditoriums. I recall with especial pleasure a simple but moving and poign- ant production of Leonid Andreiefif's early drama, " The Days of Our Life ", at the Theatre Korsha, one of the landmarks among Moscow playhouses. A record of the Moscow theatres is not quite com- plete, either, without a word concerning Pavel Orlien- ieff, — he who brought his pupil. Alia Nazimova, to America a decade and more ago and was known to us as Paul Orlenefif. Orlienieff is a restless soul. The restrictions of working in one theatre would irk him too much. And so he is one of the few foot-loose players of great ability in Russia. Occasionally he leases a theatre for a short period and settles down, and then he is off again, up and down the provinces. In a way, he is an actor's actor, for he is more highly 200 Here and There in Moscow Theatres regarded among his fellow artists than he is by the theatregoing public, but that may be because he has never cultivated a permanent public. At any rate, the evening I saw him play Dostoievsky's " Crime and Punishment " at Youzhny's Variety Theatre in Mos- cow, almost all the leading artists of the city's theatres were in the audience, including Katchaloff and Mme. Knipper and many others from the Art Theatre. Orlienieff himself is an actor of very great talent if not of genius. But his vagabond ways are disastrous to the unity of his company and the perfection of his ensemble. As a trainer of actors, he is named in Russia in the next rank after Stanislavsky. It is apparent to everyone in America now, as it was clear to many at the time, that his was the flame that lit up those early performances of Ibsen by Nazimova in this country. The farther the actress got from her preceptor and the roles he had taught her, the more artificial she became. OrUenieff told me he longed to come to America again. But the way is long and rough these days, and I do not know whether he is a good enough vagabond to traverse it. 201 CHAPTER XIII Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical Meyerhold and Yevreynoff , — these were the two names that lured me from the comparative safety of Moscow to the uncertainties of Petrograd during those anxious days of February, 1918, when the gray hordes of the Germans were swarming on unimpeded toward the capital. The stages of Moscow are the Russian theatre in microcosm, — with two exceptions. The Art Theatre with its unique tradition and its unrivalled record; the Small State Theatre with its roots firmly grounded in the classic past; the Great State Theatre with its remarkable equipment of youthful genius in the Ballet ; the eager enthusiasm of artistic revolt under Tairoff and Balieff and Kommissarzhevsky in their widely divergent institutions, — these stages and the theories of the men who dominate them seem, after several months of intimate contact with them, to tell the whole story of the contemporary Russian theatre. Still, there were two exceptions. No one in Mos- cow could deny it, no matter how partisan was his in- terest in his own city's playhouses. The exceptions were so exceptional that their fame had travelled before the war to far-off America alongside that of Stanis- lavsky and the Art Theatre and the Ballet. Meyerhold 202 Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical stood out in these rumors as the UQCompromising foe of Stanislavsky and reaHsm, the defender and practi- tioner of the theatre theatrical. Yevreynoff emerged dimly in the guise of a proponent of a new way of con- ceiving the theatre, monodrama. From my first con- sultation with Tardoflf and my first visit to Stanislav- sky's dressing room, these two names were spoken with respect wherever Russian artists gathered. Under the spell of the Moscow theatres, I had lingered in the Kremlin city almost four months. But a visit to Petrograd was essential, Germans or no Germans 1 Mid-February, about a week before I finally made up my mind to go to Petrograd, the Kamerny held a kind of all-night fair, attended by almost the entire futurist colony of Moscow and many of the artists and poets and players, such as David Burliuk, " the father of Russian futurism " ; Aristid Lyentuloff , who paints Kremlin cathedrals standing on their ears; and Vera Holodnaya, the brunette Mary Pickford of the Russian movies. Vassily Kamyensky was there, a handsome fellow in curly golden hair and a Roman stripe coat who has written a novel or two and several volumes of futurist verse. He is Yevreynoff's biog- rapher, too, and from him I found that Nikolai Niko- laievitch had exchanged the black bread and the alar- ums of life in Petrograd for the well-fed peace of Sukhum-Kale on the Black Sea. But Meyerhold re- mained at his post, and besides I might trace out the trail of Yevreynoff in his absence. My first evening in Petrograd, less than five hours 203 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution after my arrival, found me at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the state-endowed home of the drama in the capital corresponding to the Small State Theatre in Moscow but not so conservative in its traditions. " Revizor " or " The Inspector General ", Gogol's im- perishable satire, was the play, and although Meyer- hold was absent, my note of introduction to him from Tairoflf readily admitted me. Obviously, the theatre was having a harder struggle against the difficulties of life in the capital, for the audience was inferior in numbers and in self-possession to those of Moscow. Obviously, too, Meyerhold had nothing to do with this production of " Revizor ", for it was a rather ordinary example of realistic staging dignified only by the su- perior humors of Uraloff, the bluff comedian who a decade and more ago had played the same role of the town-bailiff in Moscow as a member of the Art Theatre company. Meyerhold, it appeared, was one of several regisseurs at the Alexandrinsky, and to make sure of seeing his work I must seek him out in person. Running down a busy individual in Petrograd, with every one disconcerted by the German menace and with the necessity of establishing myself in reasonable safety in a strange and turbulent city was a harder task than working out diplomatic relations with the Moscow theatres after the Bolshevik Revolution. At noon of the third day, I found my quarry busy with a rehearsal at the Marinsky, for he sometimes turns for variety's sake from drama to the opera. Could I come back that evening? — he would have more time: this 204 Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical was the note hurriedly pencilled on his card. And so while the plaintive melodies of Puccini's " La Boheme " drifted into the inner rooms of the regisseur's loge, I sat and talked for the first time with Vsevolod Emilye- vitch Meyerhold. It is easy to see at a glance why the theatre theatrical is the artistic gospel of Meyerhold. There is nothing theatrical about the man himself, — unless it be the huge, soft white collar around his slender neck, a mat- ter of careless comfort as much as anything. He is too intense and earnest in his belief in the theatrical to toy with it. His acceptance of realism as a dramatic method during his collaboration with Stanislavsky in the early years of the Moscow Art Theatre was not the act of a dilletante any more than the advocacy of its opposite to-day. His revolt against the sterility of the Russian theatre of the nineteenth century was just as sincere as his revolt against the first means by which he hoped to correct the fault. He simply found that a certain honest cynicism in his nature refused to countenance the attempt to create illusion by the faith- ful and accurate representation of life. All through the ten days that remained of my asso- ciation with him, the artistic abstemiousness of the man stood out emphatically among his characteristics. His friends are not so much among those who talk about art as among those who practice it. He has particu- lar regard for Miklashevsky, the leading Russian au- thority on the Italian commedia dell' arte, and a pro- found respect for Yevreynoflf, whose revolt against 205 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution realism in the theatre has taken a different course than his own. And his constant companion in leisure as well as in work is the artist, Alexander Yakovlevitch Golovin, who has designed the scenery for almost all his productions at the state theatres in Petrograd dur- ing the last decade. Once while the anxiety over the German advance was at its peak, I spent the evening at his home in a modern but modest apartment house out in the Sixth Rota in the southern part of the city. The front stairway was locked and barred and under guard for the night, and after satisfying the watchman I made my way upward through a rear entrance to the four or five rooms where he and Mme. Meyerhold, a practi- cal consort, have their home. Fred Gray, a former correspondent of The London Daily Mail who had been decorated with the St. George's Cross for bravery at the front, was present with his Russian wife. And so was Golovin, one of the gentlest artist souls I have ever known. Spread out on a table in a small studio lined with book shelves were the artist's designs and the producer's plans for some future production of Stra- vinsky's first lyric drama, " Le Rossignol", which other European capitals had heard under Diagileff but which Petrograd had been denied by the conserv- atism of the Tsar's court. Around a simple board in the living room we sat informally over our tea and the bread with which Mme. Meyerhold honored my visit, and we talked of the hardness of life and the un- certainty of the times but most of all of the certainty of 206 Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical the theatre and the persistence of art through the most bitter ordeals. I must remain, they all agreed, at least until I could see the revival of Moliere's " Don Juan ", the production by which in November, 1910, Meyer- hold introduced a new tradition in the state theatres. A dress rehearsal of " Don Juan " was scheduled for Saturday morning, March 2, preparatory to the pub- lic disclosure the following Tuesday evening. I de- cided to attend as a precaution against the possible necessity of flight before Tuesday. Until the actors came, Meyerhold and Golovin waited with me in the greenroom of the Alexandrinsky amid the relics and memorials of almost a century of the Russian stage, for the theatre was built from Rossi's designs in 1832 and named after the wife of Tsar Nicholas I. The more I saw of Golovin, the more I was charmed by his spirit, as beautiful and simple as the soul of a child. Meyerhold's spirit is equally fine, but he is more ag- gressive and he takes the lead in their collaboration. When the rehearsal finally began, he pushed it through with assurance and precision, often leaping up on the extended apron and playing a part himself as an ex- ample for the actor. In between the acts, we ad- journed briefly to the refreshment room for a glaSs of tea and a shaving of black bread in lieu of a sandwich. When the rehearsal was over and we emerged in the Nevsky Prospekt, a score of shots rang out in the block opposite the small shops of the Gostinny Dvor where a long queue waited with mixed patience for permission to leave the city. It seemed like a far cry from Mo- 207 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution liere and the good will of the artists to the seething ex- citement of out-of-door Petrograd. I do not wonder which was the real Russia, the Russia which will live on into the generations ahead. " Don Juan " in rehearsal was antic and jolly. In performance, it was sheer joy, — the joy of the theatre as theatre. You face Meyerhold's stage with no illu- sion that it is not a stage. Of course it is a stage I Why pretend it isn't? There it is, under the full lights of the auditorium, curtain removed and apron extended twenty feet beyond the proscenium arch. It's a play you shall see, a play, you who love the theatre for its own sake! No cross-section of life here, no attempt to copy life ! No illusion here, to be shattered by the slightest mishap or by a prosaic streak in the spectator's make-up. It's a play you shall see, and you'll know it all the time, for you'll play, too, whether you realize it or not. The audience is always an essen- tial factor in the production of drama, but never does it enter so completely, so keenly into the psychological complex as in the theatre theatrical. The give and take between audience and actor is dynamic and almost incessant. Into this theatre and to this stage, Meyerhold brings a play from out of an epoch which produced its drama in almost identically the same spirit of disillusioned make-believe. " On the extreme west ", he writes in commenting on his production of " Don Juan ", " in France and Italy, Spain and England, and on the ex- treme east in Japan, within the limits of one epoch (the 208 • r. > z > — z - < Z >: < :=; Z r ? - ^ — w < < _, fi z i: 5 ? 2 ^ - s. z s > t; T T 1 N J^CEXE DESIGNS BY GOLOVIX EOK MEYEHHOLD S FSODVCTIOX OF THE OPERA, "THE STOXE GUEST." TEXT bY PrSHKIX AND SCORE BY DARGOMUIZHSKY, AT THE MArtlXSKY THEATRE. FETROGKAD Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical second half of the sixteenth and the whole of the sev- enteenth century), the theatre resounds with the tam- bourines of pure theatricality. . . . The academic theatre of the Renaissance, unable to make use of the greatly extended forestage, removed the actor to a respectable distance from the public. . . . Moliere is the first of the masters of the stage of the era of Louis XIV to bring the action forward from the back and the middle of the stage to the forestage, to the very edge of it. . . . " Is it not intelligible why every incident of any scene of that brilliant theatrical epoch took place on this wonderful spot called the forestage? . . . " Similar to the arena of a circus, pressed on all sides by a ring of spectators, the forestage is brought near the public, so that not one gesture, not one move- ment, not one glimpse of the actor should be lost in the dust of the back stage. And see how thoughtfully tactful are these gestures, movements, postures and grimaces of the actor on the forestage. Of course! Could an actor with an inflated affectation or with in- sufficiently flexible bodily movements be tolerated at the proximity to the public at which the forestages of the old English, French, Spanish and Japanese theatres placed their actors ? " In approaching the problem of producing a play from the old theatre, Meyerhold admits that there is no need for the exact reproduction of the architectural pecul- iarities of the old stages. Free composition in the spirit of the primitive stage will serve, provided the 209 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution substance of the architectural pecuharities most suited to the spirit of the production is; retained. What is more important, he thinks, is to determine whether the play in hand is one which can be comprehended by the contemporary spectator through the prism of his own time, or whether it will convey its idea only when the conditions and the atmosphere surrounding the original players and playhouse and audience are reproduced to-day. Such a play as the latter, he insists, is Moliere's " Don Juan." " Therefore ", he writes in the critical essay on his production quoted before, " the regisseur who ap- proaches the staging of ' Don Juan ' must first of all fill the stage and the hall with such an atmosphere that the action could not be understood except through the prism of that atmosphere. ... It is necessary to remind the spectator during the whole course of the play of all the thousands of looms of the Lyoimaise factories preparing the silks for the monstrously numer- ous courtiers of Louis XIV; of the Gobelin hotel; of the town of painters, sculptors, jewellers and turners ; of the furniture manufactured under the guidance of prominent artists; of all those masters producing mir- rors and laces according to the Venetian models, stock- ings according to the English model, cloth according to the Dutch model, and tin and copper according to the German. " Hundreds of wax candles in three chandeliers from above and in two candlesticks on the forestage; little negroes filling the stage with stupefying perfumes, 2IO Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical dripping them from a cut-glass flask on heated platinum plates; little negroes flitting on the stage here to pick up a lace handkerchief from the hands of Don Juan or there to push the chairs before the tired actors; little negroes tying the ribbons on the shoes of Don Juan while he is having a discussion with Sganarelle; little negroes handing the actors lanterns when the stage is submerged in semi-darkness; little negroes clearing away from the stage the mantles and the sabers after the desperate fight between Don Juan and the brigands ; little negroes crawling under the table when the statue of the Commander comes on the stage; little negroes calling the public together by ringing a little silver bell and in the absence of the curtain announcing the inter- missions, — these are not tricks created for the diver- sion of the snobs; all this is in the name of the main object of the play : to show the gilded Versailles realm veiled with a perfumed smoke. " The more sharply Moliere's temperament as a comedian stood out amid the Versailles affectation, the more we expect from the wealth, the splendor and the beauty of costumes and accessories, although the archf- tecture of the stage may be extremely simple." And why is the curtain removed for " Don Juan " at the Alexandrinsky ? The play was not so presented either at the Palais Royal or at the Petit Bourbon. " The spectator is usually coldly inclined," the producer answers, " when he looks at the curtain, no matter how well painted it is nor by what great master. The spec- tator has come to the theatre to see what is behind the 211 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution curtain; until it is lifted, he contemplates the idea of the painting on the curtain indifferently. The curtain is lifted, and how much time will pass until the specta- tor will absorb all the charms of the milieu surrounding the personages of the play? It is different when the stage is open from beginning to end, different under a peculiar kind of pantomime by the supernumeraries who are preparing the stage before the eyes of the public. Long before the actor appears on the stage, the spectator has succeeded in breathing in the air of the period." Further, concerning the illuminated auditorium, Meyerhold writes : " It is unnecessary to immerse the hall in darkness either during the intermissions or dur- ing the course of the action. Bright light infects the playgoers with a festal mood. When the actor sees the smile on the lips of the spectator he begins to admire himself as if before a mirror." Meyerhold's facile invention and his instinct for the elements of the dramatic are evident throughout the production of " Don Juan." In addition to solving the secret of the means wherewith to make the play live to-day with the same zest as at its original perform- ance, he has devoted to every scene a mind alert for those eloquent but uncatalogued nuances and emphases by which a producer heightens the dramatic effect of a play. Such methods are particularly suitable in the theatre theatrical, for it lives and thrives on artifice contrived with skill and imagination. In Don Juan's scene with the peasant girls, for instance, Meyerhold 212 Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical has developed the amusing series of asides to first one girl and then the other in such a way that Juan de- scribes a kind of fantastic geometric figure in his dual conversation. It is all highly artificial, just like Mo- liere's language in the scene, but it is also highly amus- ing and even mildly exciting in its stimulus to our sense of gesture. By an equally adroit use of sus- pense, the arrival of the Statue at the feast is built up in a combined spirit of awe and droll extravagance which leaves the spectator in that baffled mood which Meyerhold and even Moliere, it would seem, deliber- ately sought. Golovin's scenery is responsible for a large measure of the unity and decisiveness of the impression which " Don Juan " gives at the Alexandrinsky. America and the capitals of Europe are acquainted with the artist almost solely through the fantastic and sky- searching castles of his background for Stravinsky's ballet, " L'Oiseau de Feu " , in the Diagileff repertory. In " Don Juan " he works in a wholly different mood. The precision of artifice takes the place of free fancy. I was unable to obtain adequate reproductions of the settings for the Moliere version of the legend, but Golovin, in collaboration with Meyerhold, translated the Pushkin-Dargomuizhsky operatic reading of the Don Juan chronicle, " The Stone Guest ", to the stage of the Marinsky in much the same mood, and I am pre- senting two scenes from that production. The de- sign for Act IV is especially reminiscent of the decora- tive effect of the " Don Juan " settings. The whole 213 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution outward investiture of costume and scenery is tapestry in texture; the note of applied design dominates the composition; and yet there is a fine freedom and care- lessness in the application which enables the outward dressing to merge in spirit with the plastic action of the play. I am not sure what is the final impression left by " Don Juan " at the Alexandrinsky. I do not think it is entirely the impression of Moliere. Or of Louis le Grand. Certainly it is only remotely that of the Sic- ily which the playwright designated as its locale. Neither is there anything specifically Russian in the intellectual or emotional record left by the play. I sup- pose that record includes something of all these forces, — filtered and fused through the creative imagination of Meyerhold, to the end that joy may be the lot of him who submits himself to its spell. The history of Meyerhold's " Don Juan " is typical of all such productions in the Russian theatre. It was not conceived for a night or a season but for a genera- tion. Revealed for the first time on November 22, 1910, it was played from twenty-five to thirty times during that season. Since then, it has been revived occasionally during three seasons, — 1911-1912, 1913- 1914 and 1918. The opening performance of the latest revival, which I sa^V, was the forty-second in order from the start. They do not drive beauty to an early grave in Russia ! Nor do they disarrange a work of dramatic art any more than is necessary through the exigencies of time. Of fourteen named roles in the 214 Meyerhold and the Theatre Theatrical play, nine were played in March, 1918, by the same actors as in November, 1910. Meyerhold's contempt for realism in the theatre and for the intimate theatre which is, perhaps, the final development of realism, is nowhere more pointedly expressed than in his attack upon the production of " The Cricket on the Hearth " at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. The criticism appeared early in 1915 in his occasional periodical of the theatre. The Journal of Doctor Dapertutto, under the title, " ' The Cricket on the Hearth ' or At the Keyhole ", and it leads off with these lines from Gogol's play, " The Wedding " : KoTCHKARYOFF — But what IS she doing now? Why, this door must lead to her bedroom. (He goes near the door.) Fekla (a woman) — You impudent fellow ! You are told that she is still dressing. KoTCHKARYOFF — What of it ! What's the differ- ence? I shall only peep in and nothing more. (He looks through the keyhole.) Zhevakin — Let me look in, too. Yaitchnitsa — Let me look in, too, only one little peep. KoTCHKARYOFF (continuing to peep in) — Why, there is nothing to be seen, gentlemen ! You can't dis- tinguish anything. Something white is appearing, a woman or a pillow. (All come to the door, however, and scramble to peep in.) " This fragment," writes Meyerhold, " contains all that I wish to say about the public which finally has found an ideal theatre for itself." And later, after a 215 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution scathing indictment of the intimate theatre and its realism as a surrender to the morbid human curiosity concerning Hfe, he writes : " We prefer the theatre with art but without a public to the theatre with a public but without art For we know that after all had rushed to the door and tried to peep through the keyhole, KotchkaryoflF came with the news, ' Sh ! Somebody's coming ! ' and every one jtmiped away from the door. To every shamdessness there is a limit. " The wealth of dramatic methods and motives which Meyerhold opposes to realism is limited only by the bounds of the most restless fancy. Rejected as a mere means of copying life, the simplest and most homely details take on new significance as they are molded in the theatre into a new world of the imagination. From a prospectus of his Studio, which aims mainly "to develop in the actors the mastery of movement in con- formit>' with the platform where the play goes on ", I take these phrases, which indicate roughly the new implications which ordinary acts and facts may be made to assimie : " The meaning of the ' refusal ' ; the value of the gesture in itself; the self-admiration of the actor in the process of acting; the technique of using two stages, the stage and the forestage; the role of the outcry in the moment of strained acting; the elegant costume of the actor as a decorative orna- ment and not a utilitarian need ; the headgear as a mo- tive for the stage bow; little canes, lances, small rugs, lanterns, shawls, mantles, weapons, flowers, masks, 216 Meyerkoid ami tke TJ^afyre Theatrical noses, etc, as apparatus for the exercise of the hands: the a{^eaTance of objects on the platform and further destiny in the devek>pm«it of the sobject d^oidait on these objects : lai^ and small curtains (permanoit and sliding, cortains in the sense of ' sails ') as the sinqilest medKKi of diai^es: screens and transparencies as a means of theatrical e^qunessiveiiess: gattres in the hands of the servants of the forestage as a means of under- linii^ the separate accoits in the pkj-ing of the leadii^ actors, — in tiieir mo>-ements and cxmversaticns ; pa- rade as a i»ecessary and independent part of Ae theatri- cal af^>earance; varicnis forms of parade in conformity \rith tiie character of Ae general con^[>ositi(Hi of the play; geom^rization of the design into the mise en scent, created even cj- u»i/>rv>:m"'; the mutual relation of the word and gesture in existing theatres and in the theatre to which the Studio a^res." Xatoralh-. the process of reconstructing Ae Aeatre theatrical has been slow and evolutionary after Ae first revoItiticMian.- break wiA Ae standards of realism. Even the rediscovery of Ae principles whidi guided it in its elder incarmition has beoi achieved by trial and experiment, and Ae ne^ver principles growing out of the ridier mechanical endowment ainl Ae broadened and deqiened psydiok^cal horizon of our time require evoi more patient testing. It would be interesting, if posstUe. to ounpare Meyerhold's original revival of " Tkm Joan " wiA its aspects to-day. in order to see wherein he has acqtdred a firmer grip cm Ae d^ails of a technique whidi is stiD in Ae making. The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Meyerhold as an artist of the theatre has travelled far since as a young man he originated the role of Tre- plieff in Tchehoff's " The Sea Gull " at the Moscow Art Theatre in December, 1898, and that of Baron Tuzenbach in " The Three Sisters " in February, 1901. After his break with Stanislavsky and realism, and a series of independent productions in Poltava and other cities in the south of Russia, he became regisseur for the Theatre of Vera Kommissarzhevskaya in Petro- grad from the autumn of 1906 through the winter of 1907-1908, one of the most notable episodes of the modern Russian stage in spite of its brief life. For her he produced a wide range of plays, including Youshkyevitch's " In the City " ; Pshibuishevsky's "The Endless Story"; Maeterlinck's "Sister Bea- trice " and " Pelleas and Melisande " ; Alexander Blok's "The Little Booth"; Hugo von Hofmanns- thal's " The Marriage of Zobeide "; Ibsen's " A Doll's House"; Andreieff's "The Life of Man"; Wede- kind's " The Awakening of Spring " ; and Sologub's " The Triumph of Death." In the autumn of 1908, he went to the imperial theatres of Petrograd, the Alex- andrinsky and the Marinsky, where for a decade he has been the most influential and distinguished of their staff of regisseurs. His productions there have been many and varied, including Knud Hamsun's " At the Tsar's Door"; Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde"; Mo- liere's " Don Juan "; Musorgsky's " Boris Godunoff "; Byelyaieff's " The Red Tavern " ; Tolstoy's " The Liv- ing Corpse"; Gluck's "Orpheus"; Sologub's " Host- 2l8 Meyerhold and the Theatre TheaU^ical ages of Life " ; " Maskarad " by Lyermontoff and Glaz- unoff ; " Elektra " by von Hofmannsthal and Strauss; Gluck's " Queen of the May "; " The Stone Guest " by Pushkin and Dargomuizhsky ; Rimsky-Korsakoff's " Snyegurotchka " or " The Snow Maiden " ; and Os- trovsky's " The Thunderstorm." In all these pro- ductions of his decade and a half as regisseur, Meyer- hold has commanded the services of the leading ar- tists of Russia for his scenic backgrounds. Many moods and many men, is the story of his collaboration. In recent seasons, he has worked almost solely with Golovin, but the list of those who preceded Golovin presents such names as Anisfeld, Bondy, Sudeykin, Kulbin, Shervashidze, Korovin, Sapunoff, Bilibin, Den- isoff and Dobuzhinsky. In the controversy between the players and A. V. Lunatcharsky, Bolshevik Kommissar of Education in charge of the state theatres, which rent the peace of those institutions in Petrograd through the winter of 1917-1918, Meyerhold held aloof. He was extremely reticent in conversation concerning his political convic- tions, and I am not at all sure where his sympathies lie. While some of the leading artists refused to work un- der the new regime, Meyerhold went energetically about his tasks as regisseur as if there had been no change in governmental authority. If he chafed un- der the awkwardness of some of the new regulations, he was too shrewd to confess it. With his sensitive nature and his keen imagination, he combines a prac- tical understanding of human affairs, and he knows 219 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution that as the world runs to-day the artist should be happy if he is simply permitted to go ahead with his work, even if meddlesome officials of Tsar or of Soviet in- terpose in the matter of mecbanism. 220 CHAPTER XIV Yevreynoff and Monodrama Of all the notable figures of the contemporary Rus- sian theatre, the only one whom I had to cultivate by proxy was Nikolai Nikolaievitch Yevreynoff. Fortu- nately for the completeness of my record, this anarch of the drama and proponent of a new way of thinking the theatre has written voluminously of his aims and his theories and has stimulated others by the vi- rihty of those theories to write about him. Soon after I had settled down in Moscow, I foimd in one of the book stores the third volume of his " Teatr dlya Sye- bya "j " The Theatre for One's Self." Volumes one and two were out of print, and a diligent search through the second-hand stalls failed to disclose them. Kamyensky's biography, " The Book about Yevreyn- off ", was out of print, too, but I turned up a copy in a little shop in the Leontyevsky Pereulok. In Petrograd I fared better. From the publisher, Mme. Butkovskaya, I obtained the first volume of " The Theatre for One's Self " and some of the earlier plays, but no amotmt of coaxing could extract from the shelves the last remaining copy of the second vol- ume. Russian good will, however, came to my rescue, for one evening Meyerhold broke his set and graciously 221 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution presented to me his own copy. " There will be an- other edition — some day. And I shall be here where it will be easy to replace it," he said. And then, by sheer chance, during those frantic days of February and March, 1918, while the Germans were pounding at the door of the capital, I came to know briefly but in- timately Natalia, the charming sister of Nikolai, and from her I rounded out the data regarding her absent brother which I had already obtained from Kamyen- sky's monograph and from conversations in Moscow with the biographer. Nikolai Nikolaievitch is in his early prime, for he was bom February 26, 1879, and yet he has accom- plished already a lifetime of work. From his first visit to a playhouse at the age of five, when he saw " Girofle-Girofla " at Yekaterinburg, he was lured to the stage, and he straightway established his own thea- tre in his home. There at the age of seven he pro- duced his first dramatic composition, " A Dinner mth the Minister of State." Music attracted him, too, and he soon became an expert on the flute. At the gymna- sium in Pskoff, he won a reputation as a himiorist and he read much, falling under the influence of Mayne Reid and writing his first novel at the age of thirteen. About this time, too, he joined a circus and performed as an equilibrist near Pskoff imder the pseudonym of Boklaro, remaining with the troupe when it played at the School of Law in Petrograd the following autumn. When he was fourteen, he acted in a theatre in Pskoff under the name of Gorkin. In the seventh class of the 222 Yevreynoff and Monodrama gymnasium he conceived a plan to flee to America, but he had been deeply impressed by reading Stanley's African travels, and when he found how many others were going to America, he changed his scheme and for the sake of originality substituted Africa for the west- ern hemisphere. The family now moved to a datcha or summer home at Pushkino near Moscow, and Nikolai surrendered his dreams of adventure to go to the School of Law in Petrograd, where he soon found outlet for his instinct for the theatre in the Legal Dramatic Circle. There he appeared in " The Robbers " and played the role of Glumoff in Ostrovsky's " Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man." There, too, he produced his own play, " The Rehearsal ", and his first serious musical composition, the opera " The Power of Magic." His father, a narrow-minded tchinovnik or petty official, refused longer to support him, and so Nikolai went to Libau to teach, continuing his legal studies in Petro- grad at intervals. He wrote another play at the age of twenty-one, " Fools as Blind Idols ", and then in the following year, 1901, he was graduated from the law school with a silver medal. A post in the Ministry of Ways and Communications thenceforth for the next decade kept him financially independent and gave him time to continue his studies and his writing and to direct his own plays and those of others in the Petro- grad theatres. In music, Yevreynoflf's master at the Conservatory was Rimsky-Korsakoff ; in history at the University, 223 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution G. I. Senigoff ; and in philosophy, Arsenius Vvedensky. From the age of fifteen he had tended toward atheism in his beliefs, and at eighteen he was deeply affected by reading Nietzsche. The death of a friend when he was twenty brought about a reaction, and under the influence of Prince V. Y. Golitsuin he became a close student of the Gospels. In the decade following his graduation from the University, Yevreynoff's activity in the theatre stead- ily increased. In 1902, he wrote a three-act comedy, " The Foundation of Happiness ", an episode in the life of gravediggers, produced in 1905 at the New Theatre in Petrograd with L. V. Yavorsky in the leading role, A one-act comedy, " Styopik and Manyourotchka ", was written and played in 1905 at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, and " The Handsome Despot " at the Small Theatre in Petrograd in 1906. Yavorsky presented his " War " in Tiflis and elsewhere. Still other composi- tions of the period from 1904 to 1906 were " Grand- mother ", published in the newspaper Novae Vremya and played for the first time at the Marinsky in 1907; " Plutus " of Aristophanes, adapted to contemporary conditions ; and " Such a Woman ", produced in 1908 at the Small Theatre in Petrograd. Some of the more important plays of this earlier period were gathered to- gether in a volume in 1907 : " The Foundation of Hap- piness ", " Styopik and Manyourotchka ", " The Hand- some Despot " and " War." And in the same year he led in the founding of the Starinny Teatr or Old Thea- tre, of which he was regisseur during the seasons of 224 Yevreynoff and Monodrama 1907-1908 and 1911-1912 and where his aim was to restore the old historic Russian stage. Recognition of Yevreynoff's growing importance came when he was chosen in 1908 as the successor to Meyerhold in the post of regisseur of Vera Kommiss- arzhevskaya's theatre in Petrograd. For her, during the season of 1908-1909, he produced " Francesca da Rimini ", Sologub's " Vanka the Butler and Page Jean " and Oscar Wilde's " Salome ", removed by the police from the repertory after the dress rehearsal. In the spring of 1909, Yevreynoff joined with Fyodor Kommissarzhevsky, the actress's brother, in organ- izing the Gay Theatre for Grown-up Children in Petro- grad, where he produced his harlequinade, " Gay Death." In the same year he made his first experiment with the nude on the stage by producing Sologub's " Night Hops ", in which a number of well known poets and artists took part, and later he took charge of several private productions for the circle of Baroness Budberg in Moscow. His work in the theatre now occupied most of his time and in the fall of 1910 he left his position in the Ministry of Ways and Communications and became principal regisseur of the theatre Krivoye Zerkalo or the Crooked Looking-Glass, where he re- mained actively in charge until the spring of 1914 and with which he retained an interest until he left for the Caucasus in the winter of 1917-1918. During these years, too, he had been teacher, musi- cian, composer and artist. From 1908 to 1911 he di- rected a dramatic studio in Petrograd in which his task 225 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution had been to develop the theatrical intellectuality, the technique, the taste and the musical and plastic execu- tion of the artists for the Theatre of the Future. As an artist, he contributed in the spring of 1910 a futur- ist painting, " The Dancing Spaniard ", to the exhibi- tion Treugolnik, or Triangle, founded by N. I. Kulbin. As a composer he added to his earlier work an opera bouff e, " The Rape of the Sabine Women " ; a lyric- naturalistic opera, " Sweet Cake ", produced at the Crooked Looking-Glass in November, 1912; an oper- etta unusual in musical design, " The Fugitive ", pro- duced at the Palace Theatre in Petrograd in November, 1913; a group of Second-Polkas; a Lullaby, a friendly parody on Chopin ; and Strange Romances, a series of songs. Other diversions were the preparation of a record which he called " Serf Actors " and a " History of Corporal Punishment in Russia ", the composition of a Monograph on Aubrey Beardsley for a series pub- lished by Mme. Butkovskaya, and the publication under his editorship of " The Nude on the Stage." The idea of monodrama as a new way of conceiving the theatre began to take form in Yevreynoff's mind over a decade ago. "An Introduction to Mono- drama ", first published in Petrograd by Mme. Butkov- skaya in 1909, was originally read by the author before the Literary and Artistic Circle in Moscow, December 29, 1908, and in Petrograd in the Theatre Club, March 6, and in the theatre of Vera Kommissarzhevskaya, March 17, 1909. His first play embodying his new theory of the drama was "The Representation of 226 Yeweynoff and Monodrama Love ", produced at the Studio of the Impressionists in Petrograd in 1910. In 1912, another monodrama was disclosed on the stage of the Crooked Looking- Glass, " The Greenroom of the Soul ", or " The Thea- tre of the Soul ", as some have translated it, in which the action takes place in the chest of the body. In the same year, too, appeared his bouffonnerie on " Re- visor." The development of the theory of monodrama pro- ceeded, and in 1913 Mme. Butkovskaya published for Yevreynoflf his "Teatr kak Takavoi" (" The Theatre as Such "), with illustrations drawn by Kulbin. This volume dealt with the theatricalization of life and ad- vanced the view that the inborn instinct of theatrical- ity lives beside that of self-preservation and sex, etc. ; that the uprooting of this instinct is equal to physical castration; that the satisfaction of this instinct is one of the eudynamic stages, so far as happiness is under- stood to be one of the needs of the soul ; and that man is touched to the quick only by that which he is able to theatricalize. The dialectic was carried still far- ther in the fall of 1913 by the publication of " Pro Scena Sua." In 1914 there appeared the second volume of his col- lected plays, the more important ones which had gath- ered since^the publication of the first volume in 1907. The volt& includes : " The Fair at the Indiction of St. Denis " ; '^Inalterable Treason "; " Three Sorcerers ", produced December 20, 1907, at the Old Theatre in Petrograd; "Such a Woman", produced September 227 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution 15, 1908, at the Small Theatre in Petrograd; " Grand- mother ", produced February 9, 1907, at the Marinsky Theatre; and " Gay Death ", produced April 13, 1909, at the Gay Theatre, and revived in November, 1911, at the Liteiny Theatre and in November, 1912, at the Theatre Nezlobina in Petrograd. The full and complete development of Yevreynoff's theory of monodrama as well as his critical opinion of all other forms of the theatre and their apologists is contained in the three volumes of his greatest work in dialectic, " Teatr dlya Syebya" ("The Theatre for One's Self"), the first of which was published by Mme. Butkovskaya in 1915, the second in 1916 and the third after the' Revolution in 1917. The first volume is characterized by the author as " theoretical ", the second as " pragmatical " and the third as " practical." For its daring and confident advocacy of a new way of thinking the theatre, for the breadth of its knowl- edge of the drama and the theatre in all countries and all times, for its eager enthusiasm in the theatre and for its whimsical imagination, it is the most important con- tribution to the discussion of the drama since Craig published " On the Art of the Theatre." No sum- mary, no characterization can do it justice. It must be translated and published in full before its import can be appreciated. Weathering the storms of war and revolution which broke over Russia with a fury in- comprehensible to us, " The Theatre for One's Self " overcame all odds and found its way to t3^e and to the debate and discussion which follow type. For us, it 228 Yevreynoff and Monodrama remains an untapped reservoir, big with inspiration for the few and with exasperation for the many, for Ni- kolai Nikolaievitch Yevreynoff smashes idols with the courteous ruthlessness of Edward Gordon Craig. With his fecund pen, Yevreynoff has always kept far ahead of his publisher. As a result, he has ready for the printer the manuscripts for an exhaustive sur- vey of scenic setting, " Russian Theatrical Decorative Art ", to be completed in five volumes with illustrations under the editorial supervision of Mstislaff Valeriano- vitch Dobuzhinsky ; the first volume of " The Russian Ceremonial Theatre ", connected with " the dressed-up goat and the origin of ancient Russian tragedy " ; "A Manuscript Concerning Portrait Painters ", treating the problem of subjectivism in art; " The Distress of a Gentleman ", a novel ; " An Exposition of Art ", an esthetic treatise; and a third volume of his collected dramatic compositions to include "The Greenroom of the Soul ", the burlesque on " Revisor", " The Kitchen of Laughter ", " The Fourth Wall " and " The School of the Stars." Of all Yevreynoff's prolific output, only a small frac- tion has been made available in other languages. So far as I have been able to discover, the only published translations of his plays or his dialectics are as fol- lows : " The Greenroom of the Soul " into English, French and German ; " Gay Death ", the harlequinade, into EngHsh and German; "Such a Woman" into German; and "An Introduction to Monodrama" into English, 229 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution Although he had to forego his dreams of adventur- ous travel in his early youth, Yevreynoff in recent years has wandered zealously. He attended the Interna- tional Exposition in Rome in 1910 and saw Naples, Vienna and Berlin on the way. The wild tribes of Morocco were his haunt in 1913, whence he went by way of France and Spain. Once more in the follow- ing year he went to Africa, visiting Constantinople, Smyrna and Athens en route and traversing Egypt from Cairo to Luxor. He has not neglected his own country, for in search of the native folk drama of his race he has travelled from Archangel to Astrahan. In the summer of 1914, he penetrated to the secluded parts of the governments of Kursk and Oryol and Tambofif, where he studied the ceremonial rites and games in preparation for " The Russian Ceremonial Theatre ", the idea for which he gained at the age of twenty, when he was invited as best man to the wed- ding of a friend in the country near Tver. Ever since then, one of his most ardent dreams has been to bring about a creative rebirth of national Russian drama. In his monograph, " An Introduction to Mono- drama ", Yevreynoff states clearly the fundamental purposes and aspects of his revolutionary way of thinking the theatre : " The cornerstone of monodrama is the ' living ex- perience ' of the acting character on the stage resulting in the similar ' living experience ' of the spectator, who through this act of ' coordinate living experience ' be- comes one with the acting character. . . . 230 Yevreynoff and Monodrama " The task of monodrama is to carry the spectator to the very stage so that he will feel that he is acting himself. . . . " The ' I ' (the acting character) is a bridge from the auditorium to the stage. . . . " The spectator must know from the programme with whom the author invites him to have a common life, in whose image he himself must appear." In none of his volumes of dialectic, however, has Yevreynoff expressed so trenchantly the psychological basis and the inherent nature of monodrama as in the preface to his play, " The Representation of Love." Therefore, in lieu of a more personal analysis of the man and his work, denied me by his absence in the in- accessible Caucasus, I present a free translation of this preface, taken from the edition published in Moscow in 1910: " This play is an experiment in monodrama. The latter, as an architectonic theory of the drama on a sub- jective impressionistic basis, came as a result of the plot of the play, not the contrary. It is not the theory which came before the artistic creation. I consider it necessary to make this observation in order to avoid the accusation of preparing a play according to for- mula. As it is known, many plays have been written accordihg to my ' recipe ' under the name of ' mono- dramas ', but unfortunately many authors took up my theory superficially and in their productions only tried to be ahead of the fashion. " I do not wish such followers. 231 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution " ' The Representation of Love ' is, indeed, the first example of an exactly constructed monodrama. " I shall recall the most important of my teachings concerning monodrama. " Our soul is limited in its capacity for receptivity. The foundation of esthetic contemplation is the concen- tration of the attention on some definite individual ob- ject. Moreover, the change of the objects of our con- centration results in weariness of the soul-activity and consequently in the weakening of the capacity for re- ceptivity. The real object of a dramatic representation ought to be some living experience, and with this, for the purpose of facilitating the receptivity, the living experience of one soul instead of several. " Hence, the necessity for preferring one ' really act- ing ' protagonist to several ' equally acting ', — in other words, the logic of the demand for such an ' acting character ', in whom as in a focus should be concen- trated the whole drama and therefore the living ex- perience of the other acting characters. " In addition, variety not unified splits the whole into several separate less strong impressions and this prevents the appearance of the most significant esthetic moment. Therefore, in art we must absolutely try to attain variety in unity, achieving in this way an easily conceived simplicity and thus a whole impression — an esthetic pledge — of the significant. " What I have said indicates the steps to the perfect drama, — monodrama. " I call monodrama the kind of a dramatic repre- 232 L „ a; H O S o « « 12} CL 4 >" ' Yareynqff and Mmiodrama sentation which endeavors with the greatest fulness to communicate to the spectator the soul state of the act- ing character, and presents on the stage the world sur- rounding him as he conceives it at any moment in his stage experience. Instead of the old incomplete drama, I propose the architectonics of a drama based on the principle of identifying the stage with the repre- sentation of the acting character. " The conversion of the theatrical spectacle into a drama depends on the living experience, the contagious character of which, calling forth in me a coordinate living experience, changes in the moment of the stage action a " drama alien to me ' into ' my own drama." " The stage means of expression of the dramatic experience are reduced, as we know, first of all to words. But the unsatisfactoriness of these means is e%ndent : he who attentiArely analyzes himself in the par- terre of the theatre acknowledges that we hear more with the eyes than with the ears ; and this in my opinion is in the nature of the Aeatre. ■' As Pshibuishevsky sa>-s, ' There is no possibility of expressii^ one's self in words.' There remain ges- tures, artistically expressive gesticulation, the tongue of mo\-ements common to all human races, mimicry- in the broad sense of the word, that is, the art of repro- ducing with one's own body the movements expressing our agitations and feelings. Charles Aubert justly remarks that mimicry predominantly is the ftmdamen- tal element of tiie theatre, as it represents by that means action, that is. the most evident part, the part best able 233 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution to produce an impression and the most contagious on the ground that the spectator seeing in the mimicry a picture of a more or less deep agitation is moved by the law of imitation to share and feel the same agitation, the signs of which he sees. And this last circumstance is the most essential in the theatre, because in bringing about a coordinate living experience with the acting character it establishes in this very way the change of the 'drama alien to me ' into ' my own drama.' But even this powerful means of communion of the stage with the spectators is limited, as we know, in its potency. " Thus we see productions in which the dramatist, unable to rely on the mimic art of the actor, adds in certain cases to the words of the most vivid expression and to the detailed directions for the mimicry of the main acting character, the object as a cause of the given words and the given mimicry in all the clearness of its stage personification. Thus in a whole series of dramas, classic as well as modern, the feeling of terror is sometimes suggested to the spectator not only by word and mimicry but by the very object of this terror — for instance, the ghost of this or the other image of hallucination. The object of the dramatist here is clear : in order that the spectator may have at a given moment nearly the same experience as the acting char- acter, it is necessary that he see the same thing. " In such cases there comes a moment which I would call monodramatic in spite of the lack of preparation and stage groundwork. Indeed, why is the spectator obliged suddenly to look upon that which only one act- 234 Yevreynqff and Monodrama ing character sees and what the other personages of the drama do not notice in their terror at perceiving the dis- figured features of the one who has seen the ghost? That is one point ; in the second place, if the spectator must see only that which the terror-stricken individual sees, that is, the image of the ghost, why are the other acting characters shown to him, those personages whom the terror-stricken individual is psychologically not in a condition to see in all their clearness? Not only that, but why does the room or the plain or the forest — the place of the appearance of the ghost — not change at the moment of suggestion of terror in his features ; why do the coloring and the light remain unchanged, just as if nothing had happened and, though seized with unspeakable fear, he continued to see their impassive contours ? " This is not yet monodrama. Monodrama must present the exterior spectacle in correspondence with the internal spectacle. This is the whole essence of it. " Monodrama forces every one of the spectators to enter the situation of the acting character, to live his life, that is to say, to feel as he does and through illu- sion to think as he does. Consequently, first of all, it is necessary for him to see and to hear the same as the acting character. The cornerstone of monodrama is the living experience of the acting character on the stage dependent on the identical coordinate living ex- perience of the spectator who by this act of coordinate experience becomes a similar acting character. To convert the spectator into an illusory acting character 2ZS The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution is the important problem of monodrama. For this, there must be on the stage first of all only one subject of acting, and not only for the reasons that have been set forth in the beginning but also because monodrama has for its purpose to present such an external spectacle as will correspond to the inner spectacle of the subject of acting; for to be present at once at two spectacles is not within our weak powers. " In order that the spectator should be able to say to himself on this or the other occasion together with the one acting on the stage ' Yes ' or ' No ', it is not suffi- cient for the spectator to see the eloquent figure of the actor, to hear his expressive voice and to know that it is he who speaks in the room. It is necessary further to show, at least by a hint, the relation of the actor to the surrounding setting. We often say ' Yes ' instead of ' No ' when the sun shines, but it shines sometimes in our soul more brilliantly than in the sky, and this sunshine, not less than the real sunshine, may lighten up with royal comfort our miserable setting. I may utter my ' Yes ' or ' No ' in deep meditation, distant in my thoughts from this setting. Then it is as if this setting would disappear; it veils itself by my indiffer- ence to it. Is it possible that Hamlet uttering ' To be or not to be ' sees at this moment the desperate luxury of the palace ornaments ? And you, true people of the theatre, did you not become angry in such a moment at the intrusive brilliance of these requisites of luxury, at all this useless clearness of contours unintelligible to Hamlet? " To every psychologist it is elemental that the world 236 Yevreynqff and Monodrama surrounding us, thanks to the sense impressions, inevi- tably undergoes changes; and the idea that the object has in it inherently that which in reaHty it borrows from the impressionable subject is not some exceptional psychological phenomenon. All our sense activity is subject to the process of the projection of purely sub- jective changes upon the outside object. I do not know what is the color of cherries. I only know that in my eyes they are red. Do your eyes color them exactly in the same shade as mine? I do not know. I only know that the Daltonists color them in green. We seem to think that the world in itself is full of sounds, although the sounds as well as the colors are nothing else than our subjective transmutations of ex- ternal facts. That \