Ted Braun Edited Interview 4-3-15
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Ted Braun Edited Interview 4-3-15 Speaker key JP Jonathan Pitches EB Edward Braun JP As you know I've got the job of writing a short introduction to a new edition of Meyerhold on Theatre, and I don't want to mess with any of the material that you so expertly put together, so the introduction is going to sit outside and try and comment on the way in which you've organised things. So I wanted to go right back, really, and find out, in the first instance, what was the publishing landscape like in 1964 when you were first beginning to stumble across this area and what led you to Methuen ultimately? 00:00:39 EB Well Methuen was the obvious choice. I mean Methuen dominated the field of drama publishing and continued to do so for many years after that. I mean there were other publishers in the field, principally relating to individual dramatists. So, you know, Faber had a small stable, MacMillan in due course launched their series of dramatists. CUP published a certain amount. Calder more or less cornered the market when it came to Artaud and that kind of theatre, but Methuen was really dominant, and that was due to the influence of two men, quite specifically. The one was John Cullen who was the managing editor. And John had a French wife and spoke fluent French. And had a significant background in French theatre and his Drama editor was Geoffrey Strong. Geoffrey, like myself, had done the service’s Russian course, so he had decent Russian. He also had fluent German, and fluent French, and he became, subsequently, a very distinguished translator from French and German. Russian émigré author, called Andrei Makin ?), Geoffrey translated all his work into English. And, Geoffrey, under John Cullen’s guidance, took over the drama list and strengthened it, expanded it very effectively. 00:02:50 JP This is early 60s is it? EB Early 60s yes. And he remained with them for many years. In due course Nick Hern became a protégé of his, and Nick stayed with them until 1988 when he left and founded Nick Hern Books. And Nick became my editor when I came to do Director and the Stage. JP Oh! 1 00:03:25 EB So there was this unbroken succession of very powerful, and principled, erudite editors. So Methuen published its series, Methuen's Modern Plays, and also, I mean, very very importantly, Methuen took on Brecht in his entirety. And the collaboration with John Willett, and Ralph Manheim, the translators, and Willett is a scholar, as well, obviously, they, you know, set about publishing everything that Brecht had written, or was written about Brecht. And I think that's still going on, you know, it was a hugely cumbersome project. But, also, apart from its value in itself, I think it sort of typified the whole conception of drama as a fusion of literature and practice. It certainly influenced me very powerfully and it influenced them. And, of course, for me it provided the obvious model for Brecht on Theatre, because there was… sorry, Meyerhold on Theatre. Because Brecht on Theatre was published in 1964, so I took that as the starting point, and at a fairly early stage in my research, 1965/1966, I approached Methuen, and said, look, you've done Brecht on Theatre, which I admire enormously, you know, Meyerhold is a huge lacuna in drama studies, theatre studies, would you consider Meyerhold on Theatre? 00:05:33 And I was lucky, because, firstly, as I said, Geoffrey had this Russian facility. John Cullen had actually seen Meyerhold’s production of The Government Inspector in Paris, in 1930, on tour, so he knew what it was about. And, without signing any formal agreement at that time, they more or less gave the go-ahead and I in due course submitted an outline to them. And as soon as I came back from research in September 1967, I have still got the contract, I mean I actually signed the contract in October 1967. And the book was published in August the following year. So that's really how it came about. JP Two questions come out of that for me. One, perhaps you could say a little bit about the Russian services training that you had, and then, secondly, who was it who seeded this interest in Meyerhold in the first place? EB Good question. The Russian Services course, I don't know how much you know about it, there’s a very good book by Harry Shukman, S-H-U-K-M-A-N, called Secret Classrooms, which is up there; you can glance up later if you want to. And it ran for, I forget how many years, but quite a number of years, certainly throughout the latter period of National Service. And graduated something like 5,000 servicemen, emphasis on men, I don't think any women went on the course. But graduated 5,000 servicemen with knowledge of Russian, which ranged from the serviceable, pretty well up to the fluent. And I was lucky, because I had become… I knew about this course from a friend, who was already doing it, in the course of National Service. And I was at something of a loose end at that time and I had to do National Service, so in order to guarantee getting on the course, I signed up as a regular, and in due 2 course this led to me becoming commissioned, and so I ended up by serving six years. The huge advantage of that was that I was able to go through the whole range of the course from beginners Russian, right up to interpretership standard, which I eventually completed in, I don’t know, 1957, something like that, two or three years. And so I came to Cambridge already equipped with a fluency in Russian, so translation presented no real problem. 00:08:39 JP You were just a natural? EB Well, I mean I had, you know, a certain linguistic facility. I spoke French and German, which I’d done to A-Level, but I also benefited from an extremely rigorous training, you know, very orthodox training, very rigorous training. And, you know, with a further three-year undergraduate course behind me, you know, that part of the research equipment was there, you know, in place. JP Which of course forms so much of the first part of Meyerhold on Theatre. EB Exactly, yes. And there were these, this is the Volkov biography [unclear]… JP Oh, the two volumes. EB …which goes up to the revolution but no further. There were plans to bring it up to date into the 30s, but it never materialised. And there was this rather dubious book - this is Yuri Yelagin Dark genius. 00:10:01 JP Mm. These were your first primary sources, secondary and primary sources. EB Yes, and this was enough, it kept me going. I mean unfortunately lacking informed advice, I started out with Yelagin, which I should never have done. [Laughter] EB And only then went on to Volkov and only gradually did I discover just how dubious a source Yelagin was, but, anyway. JP And that goes right up to 1939… EB It covers the whole period, yes. But of course another reason for putting the proposal to Methuen was the existence of this [Nina Gourfinkel]. There were also a collection of Meyerhold’s writings in Italian, but there was Gourfinkel; Gourfinkel, you know, has the great virtue that it collected a great deal of extremely useful material available at that time. Its shortcoming is that it's pretty haphazardly assembled. It has a fairly fragmentary commentary and some of its choices are rather arbitrary. 3 But, nevertheless, there it was. I mean it was really, I suppose, I would say it was there to be improved on apart from the fact that it was in French. And Geoffrey and John Cullen were aware of it and I think they didn't see any advantage in getting it translated from French, when it was possible for somebody to go back to the original, as I suggested. So there was that and of course there was Brecht on Theatre and that was the obvious model. 00:12:12 JP So you were then launched, effectively on both a set of translations, a Ph.D. thesis and a book project. EB Yes. JP Can you tell us a little bit about how you managed to orchestrate those three parallel journeys? EB Yes, indeed, well I think I immediately saw an advantage in setting about translating the key texts, because I would inform myself better about Meyerhold by doing that; I’d established a chronology through doing that, and, you know, as I hoped, anticipated, a book would emerge. I mean I wasn't, at that time, thinking at all about a critical study of Meyerhold; it was enough to be working on Meyerhold on Theatre. 00:13:13 But in the event significant sections of the commentary formed parts of the thesis, so much so that, you know, I came to a point, I suppose, it would’ve been in… yes, 1967, early 1968, where I realised, you know, that whilst I was getting boundless encouragement from Liza, and she'd also contrived a job for me teaching Russian for scientists, I was terrible at that, terrible at it, as a teacher. Although I had the equipment, you know, I was terrible as a teacher at that time.