By OSCAR RYAN
(Author of Tim Buck:
a Conscience for Canada)

EARLIER this year I con-
cluded three intensive weeks of
theatre-going in Moscow, Kiev
and Tbilisi, capital cities respec-
tively of the Russian, Ukrainian
and Georgian republics of the
USSR. I met theatre workers and
drama critics and asked many
questions.

We Canadians really know very
little about their stages. We gen-
erally assume their repertoire is
limited to bookish versions of the
classics, with some ‘‘old-
fashioned” Chekhov, plus
“propaganda tracts’ long on
rhetoric and short on theatrical
values. I mentioned this to my
theatre hosts in each city. They

were amused. ‘‘See for yourself,”” -

they invited. I saw for myself.
* * *

The sheer volume of their out-
put is stunning. On a wall of the
lobby in my Moscow hotel hung a
33 by 42-inch printed poster
schedule for the 10-day year-end
period of repertory offerings. I
counted some 25 Moscow
theatres doing 245 different plays.
How do you choose from such an
embarrassment of riches?

There are 560 professional
year-round drama theatres play-
ing in upwards of 40 languages of
the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.
Audiences are growing faster
than available seating. I have
never seen so many sold-out per-
formances, so many enthusiastics
thronging so many large theatres,
so many fans with such insatiable
appetites for plays, operas, bal-
lets, song-and-dance, music con-
certs and circuses.

Moscow’s population is eight
million, swelled by a daily influx
of up to two million visitors from
other Soviet areas and abroad.
The Moscow Art Theatre, seek-
ing to meet, the demand, now op-
erates three houses, the Mali two,
the Red Army Theatre two, but
still the crowds come. On my sec-
ond evening in Moscow, as I
stepped from a car to join the
stream of humanity crowding the
wide ramp to the huge Palace of
Congresses in the Kremlin, a
young man asked me for billeti.
Did I have a spare ticket to sell
him? He was among the scores
disappointed because they could
not see the Bolshoi Ballet’s new
Giselle featuring the newlywed
Nadezhda Pavlowa and Viaches-
lav Gordeyev. I heard the billeti
plea night after night (and once in
English) though some of the
shows had been running for
months and even years.

PEOPLE’S THEATRES

Popular interest is widespread
and also embraces amateur theat-
ricals, known there as “‘people’s
theatres’” and numbering 2,000
groups in the Russian republic
alone.

More than quantity, impressive
in itself, I was especially curious
about the nature of the output.
What I saw was a revelation. I
found great variety in subject mat-
ter, thoroughly-modem theatre
concepts, enormous creative vit-
ality, sophisticated stagecraft and
superb artistry.

—

Some Impressions

of Soviet Theatre

In the Moscow offices of Teatr Magazine (left to right): Yuri Shub, the

assistant editor, Oscar Ryan, Tribune writer and a drama critic of the

magazine.

The evidence shows that
Soviet cultural workers set them-
selves high standards of direction,
design, costuming, lighting,
music and sound, and especially
acting. Their staging is inventive
and innovative; they are not af-
raid to experiment in off-beat
ways.

They long ago adapted

techniques from the world’s tradi-
tional as well as its advanced
stages. They were pioneers be-
fore the Russian Revolution and
afterwards; photos of the early
1920’s show decidedly avant
garde approaches.
Mechanical aids are no novelty
for them. Even the small stage of
the Central Children’s Theatre in
Moscow has a revolve for fast
scene changes and dramatic ener-
gy. The Bolshoi’s deep stage
employs a triple revolve. Tbilisi’s
Rustaveli has one, and parallel
moving floors that advance or re-
treat singly or together, as well as
a small platform that can rise or
descend ip the orchestra pit.

Scrims* (transparent curtains)
and film projections are in com-
mon use, as are imaginative scene
dividers, improvised props, un-
usual lighting schemes, frozen ac-
tion, attractively-executed set
changes by actors in character,
plus unique sound and musical ef-
fects including jazz and rock,
classical and folk and (in Soviet
Georgia) Bob Dylan.
‘STRAIGHT’ AND HIGHLY

STYLIZED

Some productions (opera and
ballet) favor magnificent scenery
and costumes; others restrict

themselves to the barest essen-

tials. Actors in some shows wear
the usual facial make-up, in others
none. Some plays are done
‘straight’; others are highly
stylized, exaggerated, even ac-
robatic. In some cases all the ac-
tion is onstage; in others it flows in
the aisles or moves high on a Cat-
walk.

Critics and directors I met were
aware of our Stratford’s thrust
stage but I did not see any in my
brief tour. (There are actually few
such’stages anywhere in or out of
Canada.) The theatres I visited
were for the most part venerable
houses with the usual proscenium
arch and anywhere from one to

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 14, 1976—Page 6

six shallow balcony tiers rising on
three sides above the auditorium.

Most stages have a curtain but I
saw one (the Taganka) which had
none. In Tbilisi, Man of La Man-
cha used a heavily-textured, de-
corative gold curtain which was
lowered until it became the stage
floor. In Moscow the Mayadovs-
ky’s curtain for A Streetcar
Named Desire closed off the left
three-quarters of the stage but re-
vealed’ the rest and blended with
it.

DRAMA TO FOLKLORE

The range of Soviet theatre
covers high drama and comedy,
classical and modem, satirical
and musical plays, mime, puppet-
ry, circus and folklore. It plays to
industrial and white-collar work-
ers, to students, professionals and
intellectuals, to farmers and
shepherds, fishermen and far
northern reindeer-herders.

The main emphasis, I was told
repeatedly, is on contemporary
scripts by Soviet playwrights,
though 20-to-25% of their prog-
ram consists of translations from
modem English, French, Ameri-
can, German and other writers in
both the socialist and capitalist
countries. From time to time they
sponsor contests for playscripts
from other European socialist
countries. Late in. 1975 some 90
theatres across the USSR hosted
a festival of shows from the Ger-
man Democratic. Republic.
Brecht plays were a prominent
feature.

“People’s theatres,” amateu

r groups such as these puppetee

How often we have heard that
Brecht is not done in the Soviet
Union, that he is ‘‘in disfavor!’’

The fact is that his Threepenny
Opera was staged by Tairov in
1930, that three of his plays were
published in translation in 1936,
that a seven-volume edition of his
work came out some years later,
that he received the Lenin Peace
Prize in 1955, that his Berliner
Ensemble visited. Moscow and
Leningrad in 1957, that his Cauca-
sian Chalk Circle played simul-
taneously in two Moscow

theatres in 1964 and that dozens .

of cities have seen his plays in
recent years.
BRECHT AND STANISLAVSKI

Modern Soviet theatre, I was
told, is based on the work. and
teachings of Meyerhold, Tairov,
Vakhtangov and, of course, the
central figure, Stanislavski.
Brecht had his differences with
the Stanislavski concepts, but the
people I spoke to stressed that
both men had contributed im-
mensely to world theatre. Typical
of this attitude is Moscow’s
Taganka. High on a lobby wall
and side by side are four large
painted portraits. They are of
Stanislavski, Vakhtangov,
Meyerhold and Brecht.

“Our aim,’’ Fyodor Kossarev,
chief of the Russian Theatre Soc-
iety’s international section, told
me, ‘‘is for our theatres to offer
our audiences a wide variety of
threatre fare.’ They keep their
considerable repertoire on the ac-
tive list, in some cases as long as
50 years, often reviving old suc-
cesses in’new productions.

But they prefer to launch
brand-new shows. Each of Mos-
cow’s 25 theatres premieres five
new plays a year. The smaller
cities with only one theatre usu-
ally mount twice that number of
new openings annually.

Soviet theatre has deep roots,
as does its ballet and opera. It
gave the world Stanislavski and
Nemirovich-Danchenko, who
liberated the art of acting and gave
depth and inspiration in the stag-
ing of Gorki, Chekhov, Gogol,
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev
and Pushkin, revealing their
country to their countrymen and
the world.

Their theatre is not a recent
thing; it was nurtured in their his-
tory and diverse ethnic cultures,
in both traditional and rebellious
art forms wedded to a creative re-
volutionary viewpoint.

number 2,000 in the Russian republic alone.

The range of Soviet nena

covers high drama to circus
folklore.

What I saw on the stages of
Moscow, Kiev and Tbilisi, #
those three brief exploratof
weeks, is being duplicated in UM
other 12 constituent republics
the far-flung USSR, in scores
cities steeped in history 4%
legend and bearing exotic pla@
names like Vilnius, Tallin
Kaunas, Lvov, Yerevan, Bait
Sochi, Kazan, Bokhara. 4®
Tashkent, Alma-Ata, Karaganda
Ashkhabad, Samarkand,
trakhan ... And hundreds ‘
smaller towns, each with its 0
culture, each eagerly scanning™
mirror of its own life. 4

WOMEN’S PARTICIPATIO

The theatre men and wom
met were thoroughly conversa
with their country’s stages
up-to-date about foreign trends,
was impressed with their expe
ence, knowledge, courtesy, tol
ance and charm, to say nothing®
their enetgy and spirit. Soft
have traveled abroad to th
conferences, some have bel
awarded high honors by thé
country. They had heard 1

BE!

_ tively little about Canada’s the) :

rical life, apart from the Stratfot :
and Shaw festivals, and I trie@”)
fill them in on the over-all pict)
Women are into everything |
the Soviet Union and theatre 17)
exception. They are promin@) |
not only as actresses but Sj
also on the staffs as directors 4) ,
producers, stage and costumé ye
signers and technicians. They *) .
teachers of theatre arts, they
theatre historians and they %
critics. Half the students at")
Moscow Institute of Direch) ,
are women. a
Professional theatre peopl¢*)
members of the theatre soci@™

“that extend across Europe #4 |

Asia. Aspiring theatre worke;
can apply for intensive foul)
five-year training couls) |
Specialized publications and &
partments in general period!

y
devote a great deal of space 1 | |
stage. j i |
The Soviet theatre is a Wy |
spread and flourishing part Oj |
country’s life. The viewpoilt
humanist; the  philos®
socialist, the criterion artisU@) ;
seeks to expand mankind’s "5 4
tiers and to improve the qualill§ |
life. It is a dynamic, living ® 1
tuned to the needs and aspifar's «
of their society. And it does: 9 |

deniably, provide entertai™) |

and pleasure. 4
(All rights res® iy |