Evreinov and Questions of Theatricality

Inga Romantsova

BA (Theatre and Film) St Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy;

MA (Theatre and Film) University of New South Wales

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Drama

November 2017

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship

I hereby certify that the work embodied in the thesis is my own work, conducted under normal supervision.

The thesis contains no material which has been accepted, or is being examined, for the award of any other degree or diploma in any other university or other tertiary institute and to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University’s Digital Repository, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 and any approved embargo.

Inga Romantsova Declaration of Transliteration

I, Inga Romantsova, Australian citizen born in Voronezh, Russia, hereby declare that I am fluent in both the English and Russian languages and the translations and transliterations provided in this dissertation are true and accurate.

The transcriptions from Russian (Cyrillic) into English are based on the 'Modified Library of Congress' system, widely used by all major libraries in the UK and the USA.

Abstract

As a professional actor I have always been puzzled by the question of what drives our desire for acting. Russian theatre practitioner of the 20th Century Nikolai Evreinov preconceived or intuitively searched for an answer to that exact same question, and he believed he found it. He called it “Theatricality’ or the Instinct of Transformation”.

Throughout this thesis I present the research work conducted to explore the answers regarding the question above stated and, more specifically, what Evreinov meant by Theatricality itself. Is Theatricality related or identical to the transformational ability of human nature? How can it be used for positive effect in the wider society and culture? Perhaps the work here presented will influence future discussions about the understanding and expression of modern drama, especially Western drama applications. I investigated Nikolai Evreinov's theory and directorial work (combined with his concepts of Theatrical Instinct and Monodrama) and constructed an analysis of the influence of Evreinov's works on contemporary theatre practitioners.

The core of this thesis is the translation and interpretation of three heretofore- untranslated key articles authored by Evreinov between 1908 and 1922. Evreinov’s theoretical work is characterised by an intricate and reflective written style. This complexity, along with the banning of his work by the Soviet regime (1922 - 1991), makes this dissertation the first academic work to translate and interpret the aforementioned material. These particular three articles were chosen as the foundation of my research as I deemed they underline the major milestones in Evreinov’s development of his theories of Theatricality. Read together, they can effectively be considered his manifesto of Theatricality. Excerpts from other works by Evreinov are also used throughout this dissertation, supporting the conclusions drawn from the three main articles.

The main outcomes of this research are the repositioning of Nikolai Evreinov’s work in the academic discussion and the facilitation of Evreinov’s Instinct of Theatricality to become more widely and properly recognised. The theories of Theatricality have the potential ability to be utilised in a wide spectrum of disciplines as a tool to realise behavioural changes and social interactions for an increased awareness of people’s own theatrical ability.

Acknowledgements

This research would have not been possible without the enormous and varied support of the University of Newcastle. Particularly, I would like to thank the School of Creative Industries for their academic and financial support, which allowed me to cover both academic and technical needs. I am also very grateful for the support and guidance provided by the Office of Graduate Studies and the Faculty of Education and Arts who would always lend a hand with my administrative and official requirements.

In my journey of discovery, reflection and creation through research I had the fortune of having the encouragement and support of two great supervisors. I am profoundly grateful to my knowledgeable supervisors, Dr Gillian Arrighi and Professor Victor Emeljanow, who believed not only in my ability to conduct research but also in the importance of bringing Evreinov’s work back to discussion. Their extensive wisdom and endless contribution, their trust in my work, their patience with the translation process, and their understanding of the obstacles I was faced with throughout my research process were simply invaluable. In addition, I would like to thank librarian Fiona Neville for her professional dedication and her willingness to be such an important source of knowledge for me.

My family became a crucial part of my research from the early days. Both my partner Andrew and our daughter Eleanore provided an enormous emotional and practical support through the different stages of my work. Andrew and Eleanore patiently sailed with me through the storms and sunny ocean of dramatic ideas.

I am particularly grateful to Andrew Sladen, whose IT and human knowledge, mixed with his creative mind, assisted me with issues that spanned from clarifying my written expression to fixing software and hardware hiccups.

Many people from my academic and personal life contributed to the development of my research project in different but valuable ways. I would like to extend my gratitude to Di Lightfoot and Louise Newcombe, who made this research project a unique experience of personal growth. Dr Alejandra Mery Keitel who reviewed and proofread this dissertation to make sure the content was conveyed in a proper and clear manner. I would like to thank my wonderful colleague Michael Kilmister from the Centre for Teaching and

Learning for navigating the last stage of this journey with me. My acting students gradually became my guinea pigs in my experiencing of Theatricality and its tools for which I am so thankful.

Finally, but not least, my gratitude goes to Evreinov himself for coming to my life when he was needed the most.

When I came to Australia all I wanted to do was acting. Life had other plans and I found myself doing more teaching than acting; however, this introduced me to the world of academia and later to the fascinating world of research. I am amazed with how much of my acting skills contributed to my research process, as paper would slowly develop into a stage on which I could express my passions.

This research work is dedicated to my mum, Larisa, and my sister Lena who were proof of Theatricality as a human instinct.

Contents

Abstract ...... 5

Acknowledgements ...... 6

Contents ...... 8

1. Introduction ...... 9

1.1. Theatricality ...... 9

1.2. Short Biography ...... 12

1.3. Evreinov in Context ...... 17

1.4. Approaching Evreinov ...... 20

1.5. Issues of Translation ...... 21

1.6. Literature Review ...... 23

The Translations ...... 34

2. Apologia for Theatricality ...... 35

2.1. Commentary ...... 39

3. New Theatrical Inventions ...... 50

3.1. Commentary ...... 56

4. Theatre in the Future ...... 64

4.1. Commentary ...... 71

Conclusions ...... 79

Bibliography ...... 83

1. Introduction

Theatre practitioner Nikolai Nikolayevich Evreinov (1879 -1953) is one of the important cultural forces of the Russian avant-garde theatre of the early 20th century. He became well known internationally for his plays, after his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1925, the most famous of which, The Chief Thing, was translated into twenty-three languages and produced in twenty-four countries. A world-renowned theatrical innovator, he was at once a theorist and practitioner, historian and director, playwright and critic, musician and artist.

Evreinov’s work was remarkably diverse and multifaceted. In his productions of plays, in his historical writings, in his articles on theatre, and even in his personal life, he had a universal theatrical lens through which he saw and approached all things. For him the various aspects of reality clearly and comprehensively spring from a single source. It all comes down to the Instinct of Theatricality or Instinct of Transformation, that is, to the power of the theatre in the world or over the world. Throughout this dissertation, the word Theatricality is always capitalised as it refers to the particular concept that Evreinov portraits in his work.

This research project investigates the differing stages of Evreinov’s development of ‘Theatricality’ as a concept, questioning its relationship to the transformational ability of human nature. The purpose of this research is an analysis of Evreinov’s theories, which are united by the concept of Theatricality. To achieve this outcome, three previously untranslated works are here included to form the basis of this analysis. The author has prepared the translations. The three works were specifically chosen as representing major milestones in the evolution of Evreinov’s theatrical theories. This project will also examine examples of the positive effect of applying concepts of Theatricality to a wider society.

1.1. Theatricality

The term Theatricality has been in currency since 1837. Although the term is derived from the word ‘theatre’, there are countless interpretations expressed across a theoretical background with some theorists suggesting that its purpose encompasses theatre itself in the context of individual theatrical practices, theories of stage-play, and aesthetics. At the same time others state different philosophical points of view adding competing

9 contemporary understandings such as multimedia art, painting, orchestral performances and even day-to-day interactions between individuals.

In addition, others theorise the meaning as a manifestation of a theatrical object, or alternately a consequence of a certain theatrical process. Furthermore, during the 20th century the foundations of theatre grew to include experimental theatres such as street theatre, improvisational theatre, and cinematic arts, therefore changing the process and questioning the definition of Theatricality. These varied interpretations raise more questions such as the possibility of formulating an exact meaning and the extent to which contemporary interpretations may be at variance with that of Evreinov. The following quote from Postlewait and Davis’s edited work on Theatricality outlines the many interpretations of the term:

…the idea of Theatricality has achieved an extraordinary range of meanings, making it everything from an act to an attitude, a style to a semiotic system, a medium to a message. It is a sign empty of meaning; it is the meaning of all signs.1

One of the most widely cited contemporary works is that of Elisabeth Burns, Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life, published in 1973.2 Burns’ approach to Theatricality lies in the parallels she draws between a ‘role’ in the realist theatre on the one hand and normal social behaviour in the wider world on the other. Burns’ perception of Theatricality involves spectators having a unique subjective experience in the theatre, based on their own perceptions and biases. For Burns, Theatricality is not an authentic experience, and neither is it spontaneous; it is composed to achieve a specific, intended effect on the audience, which in theatrical terms could be described as the ‘actor-spectator relationship’. Theatricality doesn’t exist on its own, in a vacuum, but requires an audience and a purpose. Several decades later, Josette Féral considers Theatricality from a more constructive point-of-view, making the stage space an active element in her understanding of Theatricality.3 In contrast to Burns, she defines Theatricality as manifesting in a certain space, under certain conditions and emerging with the spectator motivated to engage with the performance and ready to contribute to the shared theatrical experience. The physical space is separate from the Theatricality. For her, Theatricality is not limited just to the theatre, but can arise in everyday life. She claims that Theatricality is a perceptual

10 dynamic and this is closely related to my main enquiry concerning Evreinov’s idea of Theatricality as a pre-aesthetic instinct.4

Whilst sharing Féral’s essential concept of Theatricality, German scholar Erika Fischer- Lichte emphasises the semiotic process where Theatricality becomes the interaction between different signs and symbols. In her work Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies5 she describes non-theatrical signs: “human beings and the objects of their environment … always exist in certain … contexts, which do not permit a human being to be replaced by another or by an object at random or vice versa”.6 Describing theatrical signs she states: “an object can be replaced by another random object or a human body because, in their capacity as theatrical signs, they can signify one another”.7 Her emphasis is on the role of signs in the theatrical process and, like Féral, Fischer-Lichte believes that the reception of the spectator, the way spectator perceives the process using the signs, is central to the understanding of Theatricality. For both these theorists, their focus is on the theatrical process.

Joshua Sobol, in his article Theatricality of Political Theatre8 uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of ‘Carnival’ as a paradigm for Theatricality.9 He defines Theatricality as Carnivalistic, with satire and irony as tools of derision in political theatre. Bakhtin’s understanding of Theatricality is very similar to Evreinov’s, who was using tools of satire and irony during his career as a director. For Bakhtin, Theatricality is about turning the world upside-down, reversing the normal order and natural laws. According to Sharon Carnicke: “Bakhtin’s…teatralnost (Russian for Theatricality),10 through its transformative power, could turn the ugliness of the world into beauty”.11

Evreinov was interested in different historical epochs and expressions of Theatricality, for example Medieval Europe, Spanish theatre of 16th-17th century, civilisations and their behaviours in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Versailles in the time of Louis XIV. I found the essays edited by Tracy Davis and Thomas Postlewait added yet again a differing perspective and gave further insight and understanding of Theatricality. In their edited book Theatricality,12 Davis and Postlewait used six essays to outline the differing concepts of Theatricality over diverse historical periods. In the first essay, “Performing miracles: the mysterious mimesis of Valenciennes”, Jody Enders explores Theatricality used in medieval drama, looking at the way the actors of that period constructed the truth by replaying their own life experiences; in contemporary terms this is seen in psychodrama as a tool of

11 expression and echoes Evreinov’s belief in medieval performance style. Haiping Yan’s essay Chinese Theatricality in Classical Chinese Drama takes a similar approach to Thomas Postlewait’s essay Theatricality and Anti Theatricality in Renaissance London, which explores anti-theatrical prejudice during a particular historical period. Both writers are following Evreinov’s steps of considering the meaning of Theatricality in various historical contexts. In contrast, Tracy Davis’s Theatricality and Civil Society underlines the difference between aesthetics and realism. All these accounts, together, compare and extend Evreinov’s pioneering concept.

One might argue that the contemporary debates about the meaning of Theatricality have a variety of roots. Evreinov’s philosophical approach to theatre, and his investigation of Theatricality, pre-empted those contemporary discussions. He led his debates using his ‘theatre coloured lens’ which he believed reflected social changes. So, what led Evreinov down his path of investigations into Theatricality?

1.2. Short Biography13

Nikolai Nikolayevich Evreinov was born in the city of Pskov, to a French mother and Russian aristocratic father. He initially followed his father’s career, pursuing formal education as a civil engineer at an aristocratic boarding school or ‘law school’, but always had an interest in theatre, even writing amateur plays during his university education.

It is important to emphasise that the seeds of his interest in Theatricality start in the early years of childhood, through his participation in ad-hoc or informal homemade theatre productions and make-believe play. He wrote his first play at the age of seven, and at the age of thirteen he ran away from home and performed in a travelling circus. Nikolai Evreinov was also drawn to very dramatic events in life. One of the examples from his childhood was when he was bedridden with scarlet fever and he came to believe that a huge oak tree outside his bedroom window had mystical powers. He gave the tree a theatrical personality to keep him amused. It is obvious that from his earliest childhood memories he saw theatrical aspects in nature. In his fevered state the tree was brought to life during a storm and the child imagined a musical cacophony where every sound from the gale played a part in the nature performance.14

12 The dramatisation of such events was inspired by his driving impulse to bring theatre into life. According to Babenko the biggest influence on Nikolai was his French mother, her sensitivity and musical talents. These same traits emerged in Evreinov later in his student years at the St. Petersburg Conservatorium, where he took composition classes under the supervision of famous Russian composers such as Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov and Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov.15

The formative experiences of Evreinov’s life led to the development of his theatrical theories. During his time at law school he had pencil and paper with him at all times in case inspiration struck. It was almost an organic process for him in that he would translate the everyday events around him into a dramatic or spectacular context within his own mind. It was a starting point for him to realise that life had a dramatic underpinning and this would colour his ideas about Theatricality.16

After law school, he began a career in the government as a civil engineer for railway infrastructure. At the same time, he continued writing plays, such as Stepik and Maniurochka (1905), 17 which was eventually accepted for production by the Alexandrinsky theatre in St Petersburg in 1905. From this point on his theatrical career in Russia blossomed despite the fact that he did not have formal training in the theatre. In the early autumn of 1908 Vera Komissarzhevskaya chose the still relatively unknown Evreinov over the already established Vsevolod Meyerhold, as artistic director of her well- established theatre in St Petersburg. It was Evreinov’s first major directorial appointment. In this same year Evreinov made his first significant contribution in the area of dramatic theory, which he called ‘Monodrama’. It proved to be one of the most important years of his career in terms of his achievement as a theatre director as well as his theoretical accomplishments.18 The directorship at the professional Komissarzhevskaya theatre was certainly a prestigious invitation; it is here that he gave a speech entitled ‘Apologia for Theatricality’, the first public reference to his developing theories of Theatricality.

Evreinov was a recognised artist before emigrating from Russia in 1925, and some of his successes included the creation of the ‘Ancient’ or Antique (Starinnyi) Theatre in 1907,19 where the focus was on Medieval dramas and also the Crooked Mirror Cabaret Theatre, where Evreinov concentrated on small dramatic forms. The Ancient Theatre had a period of performing plays from Medieval times, and another period performing classical plays from the Golden Age of Spanish theatre. The theatre was co-founded by Baron Driezen, a

13 theatre censor for the Imperial Theatre and an enthusiastic supporter of Evreinov’s ideas. Reconstructing the theatrical forms of the past was an interest, which both Driezen and Evreinov shared. Evreinov called it ‘The Method of Artistic Reconstruction in Theatrical Stagings’:

The director must enter into the spirit and details of the historical epoch. He shouldn’t however become a slave in this production to this information. The difference between the simple ‘reconstructive’ method and ‘the artistic reconstructive’ method is as huge as between the methods of science and art.20

Evreinov’s artistic reconstructive method involved staging an authentic historical play with archetypal characters, as a free reconstruction of the spirit of the theatre in which it was originally staged.

Evreinov used famous designers and artists including Rerix and Benois,21 who for example were commissioned to design the theatre’s curtains, first used in the staging of The Three Magi:

In their first evening in 1907, they programmed to have Ancient theatre (Greek and Roman), the second evening mysteries, miracles and street theatre and the third evening the epoch of the Renaissance, Spanish Theatre, Harlequinades, ballet, etc. and the fourth evening was the epoch of Shakespeare in English. Finishing with plays written by Moliere in the fifth evening.22

The medieval season was then followed by the Spanish period, when he staged Fuente Ovejuna by Lope De Vega and La Vida Es Sueño by Calderon. Evreinov was very interested in the relationship between actor and audience during the Spanish period because he considered Spanish actors as genuinely passionate performers.

More interesting as theatrical spectacles than as works of dramatic literature, the Spanish cycle would reflect the development of a true literature for the theatre.23

14 In the Ancient Theatre, Evreinov abolished footlights, broke down the barrier between stage and audience, and emphasised the idea that ‘theatre’ is in a process of being actively created from moment to moment, by both the actors and the audience. One might suggest that his involvement with the ancient theatre, especially the audience input in the production, saw him develop an interest in the role of theatre as an integral part of life.24

The next stage of his theatre career was the creation of the Merry Theatre for Grown‐up Children in 1908,25 where he was trying to refine his concept of ‘Monodrama’. This short- lived venture – existing primarily to produce Evreinov’s A Merry Death – was somewhat similar in spirit and purpose to the Crooked Mirror Theatre. The idea of the Merry Theatre for Grown‐up Children came out of a collaboration between directors Evreinov and Fyodor Komissarzhevski during the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre’s provincial tour from 1908 to 1909, when it staged a series of productions in the then popular style of burlesque and caricature across small towns of Russia.

He was invited to lead the Crooked Mirror (Krivoe Zerkalo) theatre in 1912,26 in which the staging was often satirical and parodic. The theatre had started its career in 1908 and continued until 1928, with a small interruption after Evreinov’s emigration.27 The Crooked Mirror theatre gave Evreinov the opportunity to experiment with theatre forms such as cabaret. The economy of form, lightness in design in its presentation of parody and the grotesque was the aim of the Crooked Mirror. It also had a genuine communal spirit and appealed to youth, especially to students. One of the productions was Vampuka, African bride by Prince Volkonskij. For the Crooked Mirror, Evreinov himself wrote several buffonades (short satirical skits) such as The Inspector General, a directorial bouffe (Revizor, rezhisserskaia bufonada, 1911) and The Kitchen of Laughter (Kukhnia Smekha, 1914).28

The staging of the Storming of the Winter Palace took place on the 7th November 1920.29 This production was, in essence, the re-creation of the Revolution of 1917. It revolutionised the idea of mass participation in a theatrical performance30 and was the most spectacular mass production created by Evreinov. Visually the spectacle resembled a medieval mystery translated into 20th century expressionist art:

15 …the Red and the White platforms which were slanted at sharp irregular angles. Those on the White platforms were off–white, pink, and light brown in colour. Those on the Red platform were all brick, representing factory works …. 31

Evreinov’s staging of the mass spectacle might suggest that he had embraced socialism. In fact, the aim of staging such an event was not political. For Evreinov it was in fact a spectacle in spite of its political message. The involvement of the audience, as part of the production, was crucial for the director, as it created an energy that aligned both the actors and audience as one and projected a strong united force:

Evreinov’s commemorative spectacle made his concept of theatre in life more capable. Finally, he found a ‘life sized canvas’ he could paint, possessed of a spirituality and a cosmic scope borrowed from the ancient theatre. 32

Evreinov’s decision to emigrate was primarily influenced by two major issues. Firstly, as a person who had an amount of status and popularity in pre-revolutionary Russia, he was labelled a ‘decadent’ and a dilettante by the state. Secondly, at the age of 42, he met a young actress named Anna Kashina with whom he formed an attachment. She desired to see the world and live in other places and they eventually married.

Many artists left Russia after the revolution but some, such as Meyerhold, successfully integrated and began building Soviet theatre. Despite Meyerhold’s attempt to involve Evreinov in the creation of a new Soviet theatre, Evreinov replied that he would not benefit sufficiently from this endeavour to maintain his work and his health. He would therefore be compelled to go abroad:

…which I do not want to do now. Despite the fact that my plays are being produced and my books are being translated.33

After he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1925, he went on to live in France and the USA, eventually finishing his life in Paris. During this post-emigration period, he tried to continue his artistic career, working as a theatre director and continuing to develop his theories. We know from the book Evreinov in the 20th Century World Theatre 34 he worked as a director in Prague, Paris, Warsaw, New York and Milan,35 and by the end of his life he

16 had been working for some time as a theatre historian, writing a book The History of The Russian Theatre in Paris until his death in 1953.

1.3. Evreinov in Context

The beginning of the 20th century in Russia produced many practitioners and theorists who would influence the development of world theatre for generations. Among them, Stanislavski’s ‘Method of Physical Actions’ and Meyerhold’s ‘Biomechanics’ were widely used while Evreinov’s unique ‘Monodrama’ remained relatively obscure. His concepts and works did not draw significant scholarly attention until the late 20th century which may be due to the lack of available translations and to the fact that Evreinov’s works were banned after his emigration from Russia in 1925. Moreover, during the Communist era many of his works were misplaced and thus continued to be untranslated.

Although many of his plays were translated into English, the only English translation of his theoretical works is contained in the collection called Theatre in Life,36 published in 1927, edited and translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff.37 Because Evreinov did not take many of his existing writings with him when he emigrated, for his post-emigration English edition he had to reconstruct or rewrite some chapters from the original Russian editions of Theatre as Such (Teatr kak takovoi 1912)38 and Theatre for Oneself (Teatr dlia sebia 1915- 1917).39 The English collection Theatre in Life is not merely a verbatim translation of the existing material written by Evreinov in pre-revolutionary Russian but is due to Evreinov’s own recreation of certain portions from memory; Theatre in Life became an entirely new literary entity.

Then in 2002, a group of Russian scholars combined previously unknown articles by Evreinov into a volume called Demon Teatralnosti (‘Demon of Theatricality’) and from this collection I have chosen three articles, Apologia for Theatricality, New Theatrical Inventions, and Theatre in the Future, as the basis of this research project, since in my opinion, they most clearly demonstrate the milestone developments in his theories of Theatricality.

Evreinov can be seen as a combined theorist and practitioner in the theatre, but in the sphere of his interests there is also an unexpected diversity that includes his views of the relationship of the audience to the theatre; commentary on Russian and foreign writers and artists; philosophy and psychology; the history of various cults and religions; and

17 individual, extremely narrow fields of human activity (for example the history of corporal punishment in Russia). But his primary and driving interest would always remain the theatre. Theatre, for Evreinov, was a universal symbol of existence. In his passionate essay, Apologia for Theatricality, published in 1908 (and discussed further in this research project), Evreinov set forth his underlying aesthetic:

The aim of art is to create new theatrical value and I believe and insist not that art borrows from life but that life borrows from art.40

Evreinov insisted that everything around us is ‘theatre’ and that nature is full of theatrical conventions, for example:

There are plants of one kind masquerading as plants of another kind. There are others, which mimic the appearance of turtles, of white sheep, of caterpillars, of birds and so forth …41

With his highly original concept of theatrical instinct or an ‘instinct for transformation’, he expresses his belief that this instinct is a universal experience, a pre-aesthetic and hard- wired biological compulsion. In his article New Theatrical Inventions, which will be discussed further in this research project, he goes so far as to assert that humans survive in order for the universe to exist.42 The ‘Instinct of Transformation’ is equivalent, in his opinion, to instincts like hunger or procreation. Evreinov proclaims the term ‘Theatricality’ as a term to describe this Instinct of Transformation.

As a conclusion in the later stages of his philosophy of theatre, he developed the idea that theatre can work as some kind of therapeutic process. In Theatre in the Future43 and ‘Theatrotherapy’44 he underlines that important part of the evolution in his concept of ‘Theatricality’, in which he significantly broadens its definition beyond the limits of traditional ‘theatre’ and encompasses the ability of an individual to affect change in themselves and in others through theatrical behaviour. Theatricality becomes a lens through which he can view any aspect of life, behaviour, relationships, and change. It may well be that these developments and refinements to his theories came partially as a result of his observing the beginnings of cinematic innovation and the “burgeoning concept of image-making”.45

18 As a playwright, director, historian and theorist, Evreinov anticipates major artistic movements in the 20th century including theatrically-stylised staging, and contemporary studies of performance through anthropology and ritual that emerged under the academic disciplinary banner of Performance Studies in the late 1970s.

As Sharon Carnicke mentions in The Theatrical Instinct, Evreinov’s ideas were adapted and developed by such theatrical innovators as Pirandello, Artaud, Beckett, Brook and Grotowski, and influenced the development of the concept of ‘Happenings’ in theatre, as well as the development of Drama or Theatre Therapy.46 Theatricality can now be found outside the theatrical world. In assisting society to interpret and understand the wider social environment, Dutch scholar Johann Huizinga defines the notion of playing as a voluntary activity, a task which correlates with Evreinov’s idea of ‘the will to play’, and his belief in theatricalising life. In addition, Erving Goffman adds that role-playing is instinctual in everyday life where stage management can add the tools of theatre craft to interpret society.47 As a consequence, in the last few decades Nikolai Evreinov, as a philosopher, has attracted attention from people who are not just looking for new styles of theatre practice, but also from anthropologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists:48

The theatre might receive the status of a hospital with the mentally disordered patients, the arena of gladiatorial fighting, where plebs give way to destructive instincts, the theatre which protects society from social cataclysms and revolutions.49

The social revolution in 1917 was sweeping through Russian society. In parallel, changes in the theatrical world by artists such as Evreinov, Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Tairov, and Vahtangov were also apparent. They approached the theatre from many different angles, and I believe that one of the most important contributors to these theatrical revolutions was Nikolai Evreinov, who advanced the development of practices by his idea that the theatre was bigger than the building and not confined to four walls.

Russian theatre in the first decade of the 20th century appeared to have fostered two main styles, Realism50 and Symbolism.51 Evreinov was one of the most hostile critics of Realism and in particular, his theatrical debates were aggressive reactions towards the realistic and naturalistic52 tendencies of Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre. He positioned himself as a strong opponent of the MAT (famous for believable three-dimensional environments

19 and detailed stage work) and was searching for any opportunity to fight against these realistic tendencies.

Evreinov’s hostility toward realism was well known and he particularly enjoyed criticising the detailed directions for Chekhov’s plays, believing the productions’ extreme attention to detail in the staging was confusing and merely cluttered the play.53

For Stanislavski, Theatricality was equated with exaggeration, and an intensification of behaviour that rang false when juxtaposed with what should be the realistic truth of the stage. On the other hand, according to Evreinov, Meyerhold believed that stage production should aim at a kind of grotesque performance, a scenic process by which the actor and the director continually remind the spectators that they are in the theatre, engaging with an actor who is playing a role. For Evreinov, however, the stage production must speak its own scenic language and impose its own laws. One can find here a similarity with Meyerhold’s symbolic staging. Meyerhold insists on the actor's demonstration to the spectator that the theatre is a building where the performance is orchestrated for the audience; audiences are observers and critics of the event demonstrated before them. For Evreinov however, the connection between audience and spectator is crucial; the audience involvement and identification with the performer has to be very strong. Both Evreinov and Meyerhold were concerned with the audience involvement, though for Evreinov the audience is identifying with the experience on stage while for Meyerhold audience participation is that of critical outsider.

1.4. Approaching Evreinov

In order to demonstrate the development of Evreinov’s theories about Theatricality, I have constructed this thesis along the following lines:

Firstly, I have identified three stages in the development of his theories about Theatricality. In the early stage, it appears as theatrical symbol magnifying reality (Apologia for Theatricality), progressing into theatrical instinct and theatre’s universality (New Theatrical Inventions), later concentrating on theatre in life and the usage of theatrical tools for the transformation of human nature (Theatre in the Future). These three primary works by Evreinov have never been fully translated into English, so my project has been to translate these works and provide them with commentaries.

20 Secondly, I will investigate the literature written in English and Russian about Evreinov’s theories and practice. In conclusion, I will analyse and provide an overview of his concept of Theatricality, and his influence on practitioners such as Pirandello, Artaud and Grotowski. I will also analyse his concept of Monodrama, which includes the observation that “the protagonist is the performer and the spectator’s alter ego”.54 In his explanation, the Monodrama was to transform the spectator into the active participant with the viewpoint of the protagonist, thereby producing a sort of catharsis and emotional intensification. This has the desired effect of the audience embracing the main character’s inner world. He believed this kind of transformation could be therapeutic for the human soul and act as a catalyst to bring about personal change55 I will also touch on the applications of Theatricality in Monodrama in the contemporary world.

1.5. Issues of Translation

At the core of this thesis are the translations of the three key articles written by Evreinov during the Soviet era and banned for many years after. There have been many considerations to explore in the translation process. Firstly, Evreinov used rich, evocative and colourful language full of culturally-specific metaphors and concepts and to grasp his meanings has required particular translation techniques. Secondly, although one of the pioneers of ‘Theatricality’ as a concept, in these articles he introduces a fresh approach to the purpose and meaning of this term. Overall eight translator references were found to be most relevant for this translation based on their specific correlation to the two points outlined above. Catfords’s Linguistic Theory of Translation 56 refers to the rhythm structures and unusual grammatical usage being important in the textual analysis of source material. In The Theory and Practice of Translation57 the two theorists who have influenced my interpretations directly are Nida and Taber. Nida and Taber discuss how the primary consideration should be closest to the language of a person who receives the message receptor in meaning and style. In contrast thirty years later, John Said in On Translations58 suggests that the issue of translation is much more than reproducing text and that the classical concept is changing in contemporary understanding. His concept is that bringing metaphorical meaning into sources facilitates a better understanding of any translation and thus, in this context, enabling a more accurate, effective and understandable version.

21 The Translatability of Metaphor59 discusses the mechanisms and processes in translating metaphors by finding an alternative expression. Ischenko argues in her 2012 article Difficulties While Translating Realia,60 that in the case of language usage and idioms that are particular to a culture, it is necessary for the source text and target text to be identical. She is suggesting that this is particularly relevant to those interpreting in the native tongue of the source material, in that the translator has to be sufficiently aware of history, culture, traditions, social order and political life in both cultures in a way that can communicate and authenticate meaning to readers of both languages.

On the other hand, Ioana Irina Durdureanu in her article Translation of Cultural Terms: Possible or Impossible believes translation and culture are intrinsically related across both interpretations. In What’s So Special About Legal Translation, 61 Durdureanu refers to four equivalence based techniques by Harvey, which are ‘functional equivalence’, finding a set of words in the destination language which relates in meaning to the source language; ‘formal equivalence’, translating word for word where the original source term is reproduced; ‘transliterated’ where, due to lack of clarity, additional commentary is added; and ‘descriptive or self-explanatory’, which uses a set of simple terms to explain the meaning of the source artefact.

In addition, Durdureanu also cites Peter Newmark’s Approaches to Translation, 62 observing that Newmark’s ideas interact with Harvey’s concepts. As an example, Newmark describes a technique called ‘transference’, which is similar to Harvey’s ‘transcription’ Newmark’s ‘descriptive equivalence’ likened to Harvey’s ‘descriptive or self-explanatory’ translation. Although there is similarity overall between these two references there are varying differences in relation to translation of cultural meanings. Specifically, Newmark refers to the use of culture-specific words matching both languages as ‘cultural equivalence’, but also refers to the use of cultural neutral words in the destination language as ‘functional equivalence’.

In undertaking my translations, I have discovered the importance of reading between the lines and having an understanding of the cultural richness of the subject and language that is being translated. Consequently, undertaking the translations posed many challenges. Apart from the issues mentioned above, Evreinov’s sentence structures are protracted and he has a habit of leaving sentences unfinished which requires an intimate knowledge of the subject in order to be able to complete his ideas. In addition, he uses many secondary

22 sources for which he did not include sufficient reference information, therefore making the sources difficult to locate. Finding these elusive sources would have been useful in order to provide a context for Evreinov’s sometimes confusing phrasing and mode of expression.

1.6. Literature Review

Evreinov’s concepts and works have not enjoyed widespread recognition in academia until recently: not until the late 20th century when academic interest in his discoveries started to increase. In the Russian theatrical world, during Evreinov’s pre-emigration period, there was an attempt to clarify his theories. An important example to mention here is the book by Boris Kazanski, Evreinov and the Method of Theatre (Metod Teatra) (1925). 63 In this book Kazanski attempted to clarify Evreinov’s theatrical concepts by analysing and systematising his questions and responses, stating that he believed these theories held a strong philosophical framework especially conceived for theatre. In addition, he believed that Evreinov’s theoretical concepts were obvious in his directorial practice. Another fascinating work that belonged in that era is Kamenski’s bibliographical material in the Kniga o Evreinove,64 which largely focuses on Evreinov’s childhood and claims that Evreinov is a theatrical genius.65 Kamenski spent the summer with Evreinov as part of his research and provided a first-hand account.

The English translation of some theoretical concepts and work during Evreinov’s life was published by Alexander I. Nazararoff in the Theatre in Life published in 1927.66 In 1973 Christopher Collins in Life as a Theatre edited and translated Evreinov’s plays.67 In his introduction to Five Modern Plays by Nikolai Evreinov he wrote a glowing report on Evreinov’s ability as a playwright and theatre practitioner. It can be assumed that the Collins translation has opened up a broader accessibility to Evreinov’s theatrical concepts and the interpretations of his theoretical theories became more widely known and researched in the academic theatrical world as a consequence. In conclusion, he writes:

The Evreinov style … consists of unashamed exploitation of a multitude of the theatre’s traditional resources: music, dance, gesture, colour, plays-within-plays, addresses to the audience, exaggerated characters, stock characters, masks, disguises, witty repartee, complicated plots, and surprise endings.

23 Although some complain that it is all de trop, Evreinov’s theatrical style is precisely what is necessary for his theme of theatre in life.68

Laurence Senelick translated Evreinov’s famous article Introduction to Monodrama, which he published in Russian Dramatic Theory (1981).69 The concept of this volume includes critical articles on theatre written by famous Russian poets, writers, and theatre practitioners from renowned poet Aleksandr Pushkin to the playwright Leonid Andreev with his letters from the theatre. According to Senelick they were chosen because they cover broad questions of style, genre and nature of the theatre and what Senelick called theatre reviewing, which emphasised literary rather than historical concepts.

Hildebrand’s article Pirandello’s Theatre and the Influence of Nikolai Evreinov 70 examines Evreinov’s influence on the work of Luigi Pirandello. Pirandello considered Evreinov’s plays to be in accord with his own ideas about theatre. Although the article lacks biographical documentation, Evreinov’s influence on Pirandello is analysed on an aesthetic level only. They both believed in Theatricality in everyday life and on stage as well. To Pirandello, everyday life was a dynamic where he created a homogenous world suggesting the characters and their actions can be a consequence of artistic creation and not a role-playing life. “The artist is free and happy in the creative process, because what he creates is a result of his own conscious will, a will governed of course only by the necessities of the work of art itself and not by the rules of society”.71 However, the relationship between the chaotic worlds of the illusionary art is very questionable for Pirandello. Both Pirandello and Evreinov have a quest for a positive vision of the theatre as a cultural phenomenon in the broadest sense. Pirandello and Evreinov both proclaim the existence of the will to creative transformation, and both utilise the stylistic device of ‘a play within a play’.

Alexandra Smith in the article Nikolai Evreinov and Edith Craig as Mediums of Modernist Sensibility72 compares him with Craig, and she links Evreinov’s plays to Russian modernist thought shaped by the atmosphere of crisis associated with the Russo-Japanese war and the first Russian Revolution. In comparison, she suggests that Edith Craig’s production of the Evreinov play Theatre of the Soul demonstrates that the philosophy of theatricalisation of everyday life might enable people to overcome what she calls the fragmentation of modern society. Smith believes that Craig preferred to direct Evreinov monodramas because they appealed to Craig’s artistic sensibility, as she claims in her article that the

24 Monodrama facilitates the conscious organisation of a chaotic flow of time into meaningful artistic symbols.73 As Evreinov expressed himself, the external representation must be an expression of the internal feeling so as to make the spectator co-experience the feelings of the participant. Craig is also interested in Evreinov’s plays because they trigger the growing sense of crisis, reinforced by the experience of war as Smith expresses it:

Evreinov’s play highlights the sense of rapture associated with the confrontation between the inner and outer life.74

On the other hand, there is a comparison to another theatre genius by S. Jestrovic. In her article Theatricality as Estrangement of Art and Life in the Russian Avant‐garde,75 she compares Evreinov’s vision to Artaud’s vision of theatre where everything should not be expressed through words and dialogue; both suggest there is an organic part of being human, similar to children’s innate need to learn through play.

Two of the most significant sources viewed were the material embodied in the doctoral research undertaken by Sharon-Marie Carnicke which then appeared in her book Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century, and a dissertation by Spenser Golub, Evreinov, Theatre of Paradox and Transformation. Both give a fascinating portrait of Evreinov. Golub stresses Evreinov’s major theories set within the political, social and cultural context of his time, while Carnicke focuses tightly on an analysis of his dramatic literature. The detailed analysis of both books is given greater place in this research project due to the depth of the knowledge accumulated for this thesis.

Carnicke’s research is arguably one of the most comprehensive accounts of Evreinov’s crusade for the Theatrical Instinct. She details Evreinov’s advocacy of the importance of Monodrama and Theatre for Oneself. Carnicke became interested in Evreinov’s ideas whilst directing the play The Chief Thing (Samoye Glavnoye). According to her, Evreinov used theoretical ideas brooding in the political and cultural air sporadically and intuitively. Evreinov began writing about his theories concerning theatre while directing, but according to Carnicke he preferred creative conceptual work and writing to the rehearsal process of a production. It leads to thought provoking ideas regarding how much his theoretical discoveries were reflected in his practical work.

25 She describes the so-called ‘Teatralnost’ (Instinct of Theatricality), arguing that his views hardly changed over time, that he simply suggests or states rather than clarifies his ideas. According to Carnicke he articulates the understanding of ‘Teatralnost’ as “necessary for survival, pre-aesthetic, universal instinct”.76 It is important to underline that instinct was a primary research topic in science at the time. Social sciences, new trends of psychology, and anthropology were being investigated for clues to the nature of theatre by many practitioners, as outlined by Carnicke.

She then investigates Evreinov’s nature of theatre, what motivates the central question of his theories and sees different perspectives available to him at that time. Evreinov’s importance to her is precisely his attempt to define the theatre, its role for society, for personal life and its spirituality. Carnicke examines and explains that for Evreinov theatre is not only an artistic experience, but “conscious and subconscious feeling, multileveled concept”77 studied through interdisciplinary subjects.

In the chapters Monodrama and Theatre for Oneself and Tradition of the Commedia dell’Arte we see the continuity of investigation of Evreinov’s major concepts. According to Carnicke, Evreinov believed that a person’s expression through the character they create and perform, the mask they wear, is crucial for survival, a kind of tool for continuing the progress in this life. He called himself a prophet of Theatricality; he tried to turn his life into a play. Carnicke gives insight into Evreinov’s theory and claims that the essence of theatre, Theatricality, equals the Instinct of Transformation.

In conclusion, she examines multi-levelled concepts of Theatricality and ‘Monodrama’, through his articles and two major plays, scrutinising why he chose to use the word instinct. She also emphasises that at that time it was an adequate conclusion but in terms of contemporary psychology it would be ambiguous. Arguably she supports the evidence that Evreinov pioneers the interdisciplinary Performance Studies, as well as unique theatre styles later developed by Artaud and Grotowski. Carnicke’s opinion is valuable because it is the first occurrence in academic literature in which Evreinov is recognised as pioneering the contemporary way of thinking which influences today's theatre. His work and results are reflected in styles seen in today’s interdisciplinary approach to Theatricality.

26 As mentioned before, in comparison to Carnicke’s dissertation, Golub frames his analysis of Evreinov’s theory using social life in pre-revolutionary Russia as a reflection on Evreinov’s theories of the theatre, most importantly, Monodrama. According to Golub:

Evreinov believed that the spectator will relate only to that stage action which he can call his drama, which he can co-experience with the character in the play as if he, the spectator, were playing the role.78

He further connects it to the theatrical instinct, trying to answer the questions of ‘where does theatrical instinct come from?’ and ‘when did it first appear?’ Golub said that Evreinov theorised that the:

awakening of man’s will to theatre coincided with his apprehension of his own dualistic nature – body vs. soul.79

Golub was naturally attracted to Evreinov’s major theatrical ideas where theatre pours into life and life into theatre, with each of us serving both as actor and audience member. This concept of Monodrama, according to Golub, was a step in the development of Evreinov’s ‘theatre in life’ philosophy. In his Introduction: Harlequinade, Golub emphasises that Evreinov’s driving philosophy is to express himself through role-playing, in this instance to play Harlequin, the character in the Commedia dell’Arte. It underlines the way his theories synchronised with the social changes brewing at the time, expressed in colourful public debates, lectures, discussions in search of new theatrical forms. According to Golub,

It was a general impulse in the Russian arts to turn to the past in order to reclaim art as a vital force in the life of society.80

Golub concluded that Evreinov set out to prove that ancient civilizations such as the Greek, Chinese, and Hindu all have a strong theatrical base. He turned to the Middle Ages in the creation of his Ancient Theatre and reproduced the plays of that period in order to prove that the theatrical instinct flourished during that time. His involvement in the Crooked Mirror Theatre served as a laboratory and forum for his ideas. Practitioners were returning to the past, using parody and humour as powerful tools to reclaim theatre in the life of society. Perhaps for Evreinov laughter was a deadly weapon.

27 Golub’s book was directly influential to my thinking because he positions his discussions about Evreinov’s theories within the political, and cultural context of Evreinov’s Russia. An example is in staging The Storming of the Winter Palace, when Evreinov set out to prove his concept of ‘theatre in life’ even more convincingly. After the Revolution, he utilised the political energy of the masses as an active ingredient in his production, in which ordinary people, soldiers, sailors, become active participants in the production, which recreates the overthrow of political power. It was an unprecedented theatre event. It was theatre with the audience as a main character and was, as well perhaps, the first directly propagandist theatre piece. This was directly influential, as theatre started breaking down boundaries even more with audience participation, which I believe is a cornerstone of Theatricality.

It was not until 2002 that a significant part of Evreinov’s work was published in Russian in Moscow. This was published in the book called Demon Teatralnosti,81 edited by Victor Maksimov and Tatyana Dzhurova; it contains most of his written theoretical work completed prior to leaving Russia. Those articles were rediscovered from theatrical archives and are now awaiting translation and introduction to the academic world, in order to re-establish the importance of Evreinov’s influence on 20th century theatre development. Most recently, Dzhurova, a Russian contemporary theatre critic, published her study titled Concepts of Theatricality in Evreinov’s Art, where she traces the director's methodology, as well as the problems and stylistic features of Evreinov’s dramatic art at various stages of his work.82 She analyses the extent to which Evreinov's artistic creativity was the continuation (embodiment) of his theoretical innovations. Throughout her dissertation, Dzhurova is following Carnicke’s steps and analysing the activities of Evreinov-theorist and Evreinov-practitioner (director, playwright) which are viewed holistically. In addition, the transformation of Evreinov's initial theoretical attitudes is investigated, in his stage practice; she believes the practice did not prove his theoretical beliefs.

At the beginning of the 20th Century Russia experienced a cultural boost of ideas in art and theatre, in the so-called Silver Age, when theatre was considered to be at the forefront of avant-garde tendencies. Another book relevant to my research is A. Vislova’s Silver Age as Theatre: the Phenomenon of Theatricality.83 Vislova refers to the Silver Age as a classical era where new theatrical concepts and practices were developed, with the majority of developments happening within the Russian theatre scene.

28 The whole theatrical world found a future in modern theatrical practice following the Silver Age of theatrical innovations.

Finally, Babenko, in his book Harlequin and Pierrot84 covers the intensive work in Evreinov’s life before he emigrated from Russia. Babenko wrote that Evreinov’s life was surrounded by theatre, as he was in constant search of more theatre forms. With the surge of the masses in the Russian Revolution, for example, he invited his audience to participate in his productions. Babenko believed that with the destruction of the traditional class structure, Evreinov was looking for transfiguration through theatre. However, in view of the political climate where people were searching for answers from past experience, the same was happening in art. Art was looking back to ancient times, but it was not the Ancient Greek theatre that influenced the Russians, it was to the Middle Ages that they looked, where the audience took an active role in performances. The productions of the Crooked Mirror theatre were based around parody and miniatures; at a time when the whole country was gripped by crisis and turmoil, Evreinov believed humour would promote the healing of the nation’s soul.85

Evreinov ‘s wife, Anna Kashina, provides a much more personal view of his life in her biography, Evreinov in the 20th Century World Theatre.86 The book examines twenty-eight years of his life. It details the suffering and challenges he experienced in revolutionary Russia and during the period of his emigration with Anna in between the First and Second World Wars. The aim of her book (written in the first person) was to highlight his outstanding achievements as a playwright, director, lecturer and author of the History of Russian Theatre. She describes his personality as a man of contradictions, whose post- emigration life was spent in many countries and whose works were spread even further via the many translations that were done. As his wife she was able to collate critical articles of his famous productions and to give an incredible insight into his personality, which would not have otherwise been recorded. She was also able to give a chronological record of his productions and of the development of his post-emigration theatrical theories. Anna was intrigued with his theatrical theories and was an active participant in all of his work. She collected photographs, interviews with directors, newspaper articles and reviews of his plays, and according to her they were chronologically organised in albums.

29 This period of life was very tumultuous and included two Russian revolutions, two World Wars and a post-war economic and social depression. However, Evreinov’s multi-faceted life as a lecturer, and as an author of many books and articles on theatre and directing, could be described as being unprecedented in cultural richness and consistency. Anna Kashina’s book is biographical proof that he lived his life according to his theatrical discoveries, such as Theatre in Life and Theatre for Oneself, and through the difficult years he applied his theatrical ideas within his own life, as a survival mechanism. Their life abroad was full of ups and downs. On the one hand they had great success with the triumph of The Chief Thing and on the other hand there were years of poverty when Russian cultural activities in Paris were forbidden due to the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Historically this book contains important material for Russian and Soviet theatre reviewers. For example, both Carnicke and Golub use Anna’s book as a source, and they all mention her name with thanks for the years of work documenting his career both during his life and after his death. As the popularity of Evreinov grows, there is much more that needs to be discovered about his theories, as Theatricality becomes more acceptable as a tool for transformation through transfiguration the importance of his work will become more apparent. In the next three chapters I will analyse the three main stages of Evreinov’s ideas of development of Theatricality by translating and providing commentaries on three of his key articles.

1 Davis, Tracy C., and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Theatricality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 2 Burns, Elizabeth. Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. 3 Feral, Josette, and Ronald P. Bermingham. “Theatricality: The Specificity of Theatrical Language.” [In English]. SubStance 31, no. 2 (2002): 94-108. 4 Feral, Josette. “Foreword.” SubStance 31, no. 2 (2002): 3-13. 5 Fischer-Lichte, E. “Theatricality Introduction: Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies.” Theatre Research International 20, no. 2 (1995): 85-89. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Sobol, Joshua. “Theatricality of Political Theatre.” Maske und Kothurn: Internationale Beitrage zur Theaterwissenschaft 33, no. 3-4 (1987): 107-12. 9 Mikhail Bakhtin (November 17, 1895 – March 7, 1975) was a Russian philosopher and literary critic. Sobol used Bakhtin’s dissertation – later published in 1965 as Rabelais and His World (Russian: Tvorcestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekov'ja i Renessansa) – to develop his (Sobol’s) theory of Theatricality.

30

10 Teatralnost means Theatricality, translation from Russian. 11 Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989, 65. 12 Davis, Tracy C., and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Theatricality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 13 Babenko, V. G., Harlequin and Pierrot: Nikolai Evreinov, Aleksandr Vertinski. Materials to Biographies. Ekaterinburg, Russia: Ural University, 1992. 14 Ibid.,53. 15 Ibid.,70. 16 Ibid.,17. 17 Stepik and Maniurochka 1905 was an early play Evreinov’s realistic sketches were written for Alexandrinski Theatre for two famous Russian actors V.V.Strelskaya and P.M.Medvedev. 18 Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984, 23. 19 Babaenko, V. G., 77. 20 Golub, 123. 21 Nicholas Rerix (October 9, 1874 – December 13, 1947) was a Russian painter, writer, theosophist, and member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art). Alexandre Benois (April 21, 1870 – February 9, 1960) was a painter and founder of the art magazine and movement Mir Iskusstva. Rerix and Benois created and designed some productions and the permanent curtain for the Ancient Theatre. This permanent curtain represented a tapestry from the thirteenth century with medieval motifs. 22 Golub., 109. 23 Ibid., 127. 24 Ibid., 138 25 Babenko, V.G. 91. 26 Ibid.,88. 27 Golub, 147. 28 Carnicke, The Theatrical Instinct, 77. 29 Golub, 192-207. 30 The Taking of the Winter Palace, November 7,1920, featured 8,000 actors, 500 musicians and 150,000 spectators. (Collins C, editor. Life as theater: Five modern plays. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973, 28) 31 Golub, 198. 32 Ibid., 201. 33 Ibid., 203. 34 A. Kashina-Evreinova. Evreinov in the 20th Century World Theatre. Imprimerie Beresniak:Paris, 1964. 35 Babenko, V.G., 2 36 Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, repr. 1970. 37 Ibid. 38Evreinov, N. Teatr Kak Takovoi. St. Petersburg: Sovremennoe iskusstvo, 1912. 39 Evreinov, N. Teatr Dlia Sebia: Pragmaticheskaia, Teoreticheska , Prakticheskaia. St Petersburg: Maski, 1915-1917. 40 Evreinov, “Apologia for Theatricality,” Demon Teatralnosti (edited Maksimov), 2005, 39-42. 41 “The Theatre in the Animal Kingdom,” The Theatre in Life, Evreinov (edited Nazaroff), 1927,12 42 “New Theatrical Inventions,” Demon Teatralnosti, Evreinov (edited Maksimov), 2005,94-96. 43 “Theatre in the Future,” Demon Teatralnosti, Evreinov (edited Maksimov), 2005,292-296 44 “Theatrotherapy,” The Theatre in Life, Evreinov (edited Nazaroff), 1927, 122-127 45 “Theatre in the Future,” Demon Teatralnosti, Evreinov (edited Maksimov), 2005, 294.

31

46 Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989. 47 Carnicke, 60, 84-85. 48 Ibid., 4. 49 Dzhurova, Tatiana. “Conceptcia Tetralnosti V Tvorchestve N.N.Evreinova.”Ph.D.diss. St. Petersburg State Academy of Theatrical Arts, 2007. 50 Realism describes any play that depicts ordinary people in everyday situations. Realism is largely metonymic in mode as in Elam K. The semiotics of theatre and drama. London: Methuen, 1980, 28. 51 Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. According to Keir Elam “symbolism is primarily metaphoric” Elam K. The semiotics of theatre and drama. London: Methuen, 1980, 29. 52 Naturalism is a form of realism that particularly focuses on how technology and science affect society as a whole, as well as how society and genetics affect individuals. 53 Carnicke, 55. 54 “The Introduction to Monodrama,” Demon Teatralnosti, Evreinov (edited Maksimov), 2005,97- 112. 55 Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970. 56 Catford, John Cunnison. A Linguistic Theory of Translation; an Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. 57 Nida, Eugene, and Charles Taber. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Boston: Brill, 2003. 58 Brower, R.A., Ed. On Translation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. 59 Alghbban, Mohammed. “The Translatability of Metaphor: Study and Investigation.” Ph.D., Indiana University, 2011. 60 Ischenko, I. Difficulties While Translating Realia. Dnepropetrovsk: Alfred Nobel University, 2012. 61 Harvey, Malcolm. “What’s So Special about Legal Translation?” Meta: Translators' Journal 47, no. 2 (2002): 177-85. 62 Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981. 63 Kazanski, B.V. Metod Teatra: Analiz Sistemy N.N.Evreinova. Leningrad: Academia, 1925. 64 Kamenskii, Vasilii. Kniga Ob Evreinove. St.Petersburg: Sovremennoe Iskustvo, 1917. 65 Carnicke, 189. 66 Evreinoff, N. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander Nazaroff Bloom,1970 67 Collins, Christopher, ed. Life as Theater: Five Modern Plays. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973. 68 Ibid.,26. 69 Senelick, Laurence, ed. Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists: An Anthology. 1st ed, University of Texas Press Slavic Series, vol. no 5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 70 Hildebrard, Olle. “Pirandello's Theater and the Influence of Nikolai Evreinov.” Italica 60, no. 2 (1983): 107-30. 71 Ibid.,112. 72 Smith, A. “Nikolai Evreinov and Edith Craig as Mediums of Modernist Sensibility.” New Theatre Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2010): 203-16. 73 Ibid. 74 Smith, A.,212. 75 Jestrovic, Silvija. “Theatricality as Estrangement of Art and Life in the Russian Avant-Garde.” Substance 31, no. 2/3 (2002): 42. 76 Carnicke, 50. 77 Ibid.,105. 78 Golub, ,46. 79 Ibid.,55. 80 Ibid.,107. 81 Evreinov, N., ed. Demon Teatral'nosti. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002.

32

82 Dzhurova, Tatiana. “Conceptcia Tetralnosti V Tvorchestve N.N.Evreinova.” St.Petersburg State Academy of Theatrical Arts, 2007. 83.Vislova, A. V. The Silver Age as Theater: The Phenomenon of Theatricality in Culture at the Turn of the 20th Century. Moscow: Rossiiskii Institut Kul`turologi, 2000. 84 Babenko, V G., 53. 85 Ibid.,54. 86 Anna Kashina-Evreinova, 9.

33

The Translations

34 2. Apologia for Theatricality87

Speech of the newly appointed director to the cast of the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre (Teatr na Ofizerskoy)

I’m very well aware that my listener is very tired of hearing about new theatrical discoveries, and from their own experience knows those discoveries are unpractical, and even if their own souls don’t turn away from the modern representations of our theatrical nonsense, their yearning for eternal love for theatre will grow more and more with every hour.

In reality we do live in the era of incredible new theatrical creations. We can hear so many voices88 which try to explain and understand the task of scenic art or creativity, and I am absolutely sure these never existed in the history of humanity.

And it is very strange: it seems that time has doubled its pace and only yesterday it seemed that we already had particular theatrical rules, which we are now questioning. And tomorrow we might even forget these questions, as their only purpose was the cynical finding of fault, and after a time they will look like complete nonsense or madness. Do you remember the words Dr. Stockmann said that, “Truth doesn’t live forever but like a normal person, it gets old and loses its firmness and dies”.89

So theatrical truth obviously is not the exception to the rule. If we follow Ibsen’s analogy I would like to add that truth really needs to be given time, that it can grow in the eyes of its beholders and come to fruition. Maybe it needs plenty of time for people to recognise its maturity. For a new truth is very ephemeral when it is born and it is very impractical to expect that it will be accepted.90

Of course, there is a real truth, which is quite mature and so obvious, but for it to triumph and achieve worldwide recognition there must be a revolution. And by contrast there is some truth that is so delicate it is very difficult to believe that it will survive. But there is no other way than to wait for it to develop and evolve and it will be silly to expect anything else. We know that a Wunderkind doesn’t become Wundermenschen straight away. There are certain truths – like a wonder child relation to which we should be very cautious. And a living example is Meyerhold, who opened his wings and embodied theatrical creativity, and we believed he achieved some heights but then he publicly

35 proclaimed his mistakes committed during his tenure at the theatre of Vera Komissarzhevskaya.91 With an open heart he recognised that after his direction of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande92 the theatre of extreme symbolism was unsuccessful and had to be stopped altogether.

When I speak of symbolic theatre I especially emphasise that word (symbolic) as I believe that there is no other theatre than the theatre of symbolism. Although naturalism is very popular in our days, and although contemporary theatre is trying to develop down that path – the place and action in the theatre is still symbolic.

And Ms Maud Allan,93 dancing half-naked in Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – even she can’t pretend that it’s happening in a real forest.94

Everything that is visible in art is symbolism because one thing pretends to be another thing. Between the artist and the audience, due to aesthetic principles, a silent contract will be made, something like a tacit consensus in which the audience agrees to respond aesthetically to the pretend reality as if it is real and the artists support this with all their skills. In theatre the audience has to think, “This is a painting but such a painting that I can believe it is the sky”, and if the audience doesn’t agree with that, the set designer has not made it believable. He didn’t paint a believable sky and the actor who was supposed to look at the painting as if it were ‘a sky’, ‘the sky’, has failed to do so. And, as a result, the audience lacks the aesthetic ability to look at the painting and pretend it is a real sky.

So, theatre is symbolic through-and-through: we can say this is the beauty of it. And it makes us happy, it creates in you an artistic value. Such art likes to surprise us and doesn’t like to borrow anything. It dares to create its own beautiful sky and sometimes it’s bluer in that sky than in an actual blue horizon.

So, what then is the task of symbolic theatre? Some say the theatre has to be a temple;95 other people say it has to be a school and they insist it has to be a school of morality.96 And still others say it has to be a school of life – in which life is reproduced in a very naturalistic form, and they prefer this to a symbolic way of looking at life. Then there are some people who live on the ruins of naturalism and insist that theatre is a mirror of reality.97 They prefer this and they prefer ideological form98 to any other form. There are yet others who believe that the stage is a platform for freedom-fighters, for

36 revolutionaries. They are the ones who believe in using the stage argumentatively, to put forward messages of social and political change.

I believe that the time has come to return the theatre to its true meaning. We shouldn’t call the theatre a temple or school or mirror of life or a stage for political revolution. Theatre is supposed to be only theatre. Please forgive me for repeating myself – ‘Yes’, theatre must be only theatre. And an aesthetic height or an aesthetic platform for the Theatre is a synthesis of all forms of Art. But the beginning and end of stage creativity is the flamboyant simplicity of Theatricality.99

And from there I can understand my overwhelming attraction to the ‘Theatricality’ that is so much forbidden and forgotten on the European stage.

Under ‘Theatricality’ I understand the tendency, which is as far away from the theatre as a building itself. Theatricality is an artistic gesture and a word that is based on the stage usage. With set design, it relieves us from the slavery of reality – its light, its glare, and its eternity.

With all my heart, I am grateful for Theatricality, because it creates an independent affirmative or absolute prize. And because so many people hated it for the last few decades, and all facets of acting, it doesn’t bother me at all. Didn’t we hear for example the proverb, ‘stop being a drama queen’, by which we mean don’t make a tragedy of it. But it didn’t stop us from thinking about tragedy as an absolute form of theatrical art! From the very beginning.

For people that follow the symbolic theatre, we believe that its task is to create the miracles and scenic mystery for the audience. And not to abandon all subtlety and force rigid meaning on works of art, which are supposed to be free by their very definition. It doesn’t matter what it means in philosophical terms.

If Theatricality is ignored, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the piece of art will be – the audience will be bored. A long time ago it100 became obvious that content is less important than form, especially in theatre art, and if one ignores the theatrical form it doesn’t deserve to be called a stage or performing art. With a simple intuition we recognise here or there the Theatricality itself.101 Obviously it depends on our intelligence but we more or less give aesthetical measurement to a piece of art. To those who once visited my Starinny

37 theatre102 to investigate the development of stage art, I wanted to bring to the audience’s attention the traditional as well as random and new theatrical inventions. The audience couldn’t miss that in the plays I directed there, even if they had a very primitive context,103 they had a very beautiful theatrical form. The primitive character of a particular pastoral performance, even if it is not a masterpiece, for example Adam de la Halle,104 has a very beautiful, naïve, and I would say magical form which transfers us into a better world in which rational thinking loses its power because, in that world, we can find real art, and that is because there exists Theatricality.

Of course, Theatricality itself has evolved like everything in life; from the naïve impersonations of the simple abbot to the inspiring gesture of Isadora Duncan, who portrays a lovely girl facing Death105– this displays a huge difference. But in both examples the core is Theatricality, which we understand as aesthetical. So, Theatricality (and nothing else) conditioned the creation of new forms of life on stage; without Theatricality, we would have on stage only a duplication of life and it wouldn’t matter if it were naturalistic or symbolic. So, the aim of art is to create new theatrical value and I believe and insist not that art borrows from life, but that life borrows from art106; and it doesn’t make sense for an artist to look for a diamond in a garbage bin. And if an artist is not able to present a pearl from his creation or if he or she can’t present the audience with beauty in diction, mime and movement to the point that the audience would like to copy it, then the aim of the creator of aesthetical values is not achieved. Oscar Wilde is very right to say that it is not nature which influences the beauty of artistic creation, but rather beauty “did not exist till Art had invented [it]”.107 The English only started to appreciate the beauty of London’s mist when the genius Turner108 painted it on his canvas. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who bravely stated that a great artist is reincarnated through his art, not in his contemporary society but in the society, that lives after him.109

The most important beginning for the performing artist lies, I repeat myself again, in Theatricality. If an artist wants to be praised, he has to justify the reality of our existence from an aesthetical point of view. But what kind of concrete form would one like to use? We know that the method of art lies in creating reality in simplified symbolised forms; so, in other words, we are trying to replace quantity with quality. We aesthetically simplify art by saying, ‘it’s very similar to stylisation’, and if I may say, the concern and purpose of art (and it was like that throughout the whole history of art), that the alpha and omega of scenic art is the aesthetical simplicity of Theatricality.

38 In conclusion, the pure realism as well as the pure symbolism in scenic art contradicts the core of theatre. The former, because it has a tendency to replicate reality, the latter because by its nature it doesn’t satisfy an audience’s aesthetic reception110. So, I preach from the bottom of my heart that ideal Theatricality is going against both ‘pure’ theatrical streams mentioned above, and I call it stage realism, meaning a direction with a tendency towards the new theatrical values. I understand theatrical symbolic realism, such as exists in our creative sub-consciousness, has the power to transform historical and contemporary reality, which in fact tricks us into believing in its existence and demands a respect which we can trust.111

2.1. Commentary

Apologia for Theatricality is the first theatrical manifesto in which Evreinov introduced the neologism ‘Theatricality’. Nikolai Evreinov made his breakthrough as a director at the theatre of the legendary actress Vera Komissarzevskaya (a Russian Eleanora Duse) in 1908. Being unknown as a professional director, his appointment was a surprise to the theatrical community. His only professional experience up to this point was the successful production Styopik and Maniurochka, which he authored, and which was performed at the Alexandrinski Theatre in St Petersburg. Although he had only amateur experience in directing and acting, his lectures on theatre were popular amongst the intelligentsia of that imperial city.

The year 1905 began disastrously for Russia. The country was damaged already from the war with Japan, and experienced widespread strikes, bloody pogroms and uprisings just as bloodily put down, culminating in an abortive Revolution that did succeed in instituting a parliamentary Duma. Theatre was a part of the revolutionary changes and artistic developments, and theatrical discoveries mirrored the upheavals and great social changes in the wider society. According to Golub, the spirit of masquerade was alive, and the transformation of the world was reflected in the transformation of the theatre. Poets, painters, dramatists and directors walked the streets and sat for portraits dressed in outlandish attire, either commedia-based or of their own devising. Makeup was applied to faces and radishes and wooden spoons to buttonholes by futurist artists, recalling Oscar Wilde’s formation of the Society of the Green Carnation, which proclaimed artificiality a more honest condition than naturalness, and naturalness nothing more than a particularly irritating pose.112

39 During this period, Evreinov was looking for a new style of theatre. As Russians were fighting amongst themselves to find a new political and social identity, so the theatre was going through a crisis of identity, and practitioners were trying to determine the next step for theatre. The turbulent changes were sweeping through Russian society, which would erupt in protests and strikes, and ultimately the collapse of the empire in 1917. The revolutionary changes were paralleled in the theatrical world by artists such as Evreinov, Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Tairov, and Vakhtangov who were working on theatre of extremes such as futurism (building on the work of Russian poets such as Vasily Kamenski) and extreme symbolism of all kinds. However, these types of theatre existed alongside traditional, banal, and uninspiring forms of theatre such as declamatory style in Imperial theatres, including the Alexandrinski Theatre in St Petersburg. Extremists at either end of the intellectual spectrum called for the abolition of theatre, believing that it no longer held relevance for contemporary issues and audiences, and was incapable of doing so again. On the other hand, some wanted to resuscitate the theatre. In a short period of time, theatre became something special, almost a dominant idea amongst intellectuals, fundamental to existence, an artistic field where practitioners looked at the spiritual life and material life as a single experience merging the two together.

In Apologia for Theatricality (Apologija Teatralnosti, 1908) Evreinov started his fight for Theatricality and in the articles The Theater as Such (Teatr kak takovoj, 1912) and The Theater for Oneself (Teatr dlja sebja, books 1-3, 1915-1917) he developed his odd and provocative theory of theatricalisation.

The article Apologia for Theatricality underlines the uniqueness of theatre as an art form. Evreinov started his polemic by referencing some pre-existing traditions in Russian art such as Ideological Realism (Stanislavski in the early Moscow Art Theatre and the Peredvizhniki painters who represented Russian realism in the visual arts), as well as contemporary innovators of symbolic theatre such as Meyerhold. Evreinov’s artistic view and declaration is influenced by the aesthetics of Oscar Wilde and the concepts of the collective of painters known as ‘World of Art’ (‘Mir Iskusstva’). According to Wilde, the core of art is style. Oscar Wilde had an obvious impact on Evreinov, specifically his ideas of aestheticalisation of life and transformation of the world through art. Evreinov extended this argument radically to the theatre by emphasizing the ‘form’ of theatrical art as the most important consideration, almost to the exclusion of the subject matter.

40 He proclaims that the core of the theatre is ‘Theatricality’, which he describes as a tendency to create different realities, which can occur even in everyday life. In this way he is moving away from the idea of ‘theatre’ as a ‘building’, similar to the ‘Mir Iskusstva’ painters who tried to escape or extend the boundaries of art with the aim of influencing life and transforming it into an aesthetic and only aesthetic point of view, the so-called ‘art for art’s sake’.

Another strong influence on Evreinov’s thinking was German philosopher Nietzsche and his idea of the ‘Will to Power’, which was crystalised in his seminal work ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ (1883). This describes what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in humans: achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible positions in life. Evreinov was influenced by this concept of the ‘Will to Power’ and developed his idea of the Will to Transformation, which he names Theatricality; he believed it was one of the dominant instincts in humans. In the Apologia, he states that Theatricality is a symbolic and stylistic approach to theatre and he developed this idea more fully later in his artistic life.

What appeared to be ‘Theatricality’ for Evreinov in 1908 was a form which gives aesthetic value to a piece of art. He calls it a “tease, dated from ancient times”.113 He conceptualised it as the creation of new forms of life on stage; if an artist wants to be recognised, she/he will have to justify the reality of our existence from an aesthetic point of view. “We know that the methodology of creating art lies in reflecting reality in simplified or symbolic forms”.114

In this period of time (circa 1908) he positions himself against both realism (Stanislavski) and pure symbolism (Meyerhold) and calls Theatricality a ‘stage realism’, a term which Stanislavski would borrow later in his techniques. It is during this time that—despite their differences—Stanislavski appointed Vsevolod Meyerhold at the Moscow Art Theatre (1905) to create an experimental studio for the purpose of exploring new approaches to acting. Famous ballet director Diaghilev directed Cleopatra (choreographed by Michel Fokine, performed at the Mariinsky Theatre) during which he employed painters from ‘Mir Isskustva’ (‘World of Art’) movement such as Anatoly Arapov, Sergey Sudeikin, and Nikolay Sapunov, whose scenery would be praised for its ‘‘barbaric exoticism’.’115 Philosophers and poets were writing articles trying to build a new theoretical basis for theatre. Examples include Theatre as a Door by Voloshin,116 and Theatre and Contemporary

41 Drama by Andrej Bely,117 written during the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.118 Without any question, Evreinov was one of the dominant thinkers and contributors to the theatre at the time. Along with others he influenced the main concepts of the so-called Silver Age period of Russian theatre: aestheticism, supernatural, divine philosophy; and justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon, where even ugliness and disharmony are only art forms.

For Evreinov it was during that time that the idea of the Will to the Theatre crystalised:

The fact that the child plays without compulsion, plays of its own accord, and that no one has ever taught him how to play, how to make his own ‘theatre’, proves that nature herself has planted in the human being a sort of ‘will to the theatre’, and that the theatre is something infinitely greater than has been admitted by our philosophers of the theatre, something essentially different from what our dramatic critics believe it to be.119

As mentioned earlier, Evreinov built upon other thinkers, such as the ideas of Nietzsche and Wilde, when he was looking for his own answers, both for himself and for his theatre. He was determined to never go down the path of Meyerhold (extreme symbolism). In the Apologia for Theatricality, he underlines that even Meyerhold himself accepted – after his direction of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande – that the theatre of extreme symbolism had proved to be unsuccessful. In comparison to Meyerhold there was Stanislavski’s realism, which Evreinov found tedious. He groups Stanislavski with the wave of practitioners who call theatre a ‘school of life’ or ‘mirror of reality’. In Apologia for Theatricality, Evreinov states that theatre needs to return to its original meaning. “Theatre is supposed to be only theatre”, he proclaims. The word Theatricality, the way it is used for the first time in Apologia for Theatricality, is supposed to clarify the meaning of theatrical art itself, Theatricality as the alpha and omega of theatrical art. To prove his vision from the speech Apologia (1908), at the beginning of his career in the Komissarzhevskaya theatre, he staged his symbolic drama Francesca da Rimini, where the idea of Theatricality appears more as a justification of reality through art, and the world is cast as an aesthetic phenomenon.120 This is the first time he pays tribute to Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas that ugliness and beauty are two sides of the same coin. The idea of Theatricality for him at this point, as I mentioned earlier, is the use of symbolism as a tool for transforming life into art.

42 The Apologia for Theatricality manifests Evreinov’s main thesis that life borrows from theatre but theatre does not borrow from life.

The aim of art is to create new theatrical value and I believe and insist not that art borrows from life but that life borrows from art.121

He takes the theatre outside of the boundaries of a building and insists on an active influence on life and life’s aesthetic image-making.

When Evreinov published his manifesto, it was as a direct attack on both pure realism and pure symbolism in the theatre. In principle, Evreinov agreed with the symbolist criticism of naturalism, but when it came to an evaluation of symbolism itself, he was as negative as he was with respect to realism. He believed both pure realism and pure symbolism were irreconcilable with the true nature of the theatre: the former, because it aims at a useless duplication of life (and to duplicate life does not mean to serve art: it means to kill art); the latter, because it is in its very essence hostile to the direct and straightforward visual perception.122

Theatre, whether it takes place in life itself or on stage, has one basic function and that is to satisfy the theatrical desire. Consequently, Evreinov's theories of the theatre are divisible into two parts, the first dealing with theatre on stage and the other with theatre in life, with both parts sharing the cornerstone of the concept of Theatricality. Theatre should be theatre only and nothing else, he argued, polemicizing against the theatre of realism which, in his opinion, looked upon theatre as a mirror or reflection of life, and against the symbolists, who had turned the theatre into a temple of aesthetic, quasi- religious contemplation. Both pure realism, with its ambition of being ‘true to life’, and symbolism, with its abstract stylisation, merely used the theatre to mediate literary, political, religious and aesthetic messages. Evreinov maintained that the stage representation should rather be an anti-world, closed in on itself and totally alien from the everyday reality of the spectator. On stage, that is, in the pseudo-reality created by the actors, everything should be possible, everything that social and other conventions had excluded from everyday life. Bearing this in mind, it is not surprising that to Evreinov the highest manifestation of theatrical theatre was the Italian comedy of masks, the Commedia dell’Arte, in which he believed Theatricality flourished with free improvisation from the Italian actors. His favorite character was that of Harlequin and notably he often praised

43 those playing the part of Harlequin (Arlecchino in Russian). According to Carnicke he personalized Harlequin all his life, he saw an embodiment of himself and developed the character further in each of his plays.123 This transformation perhaps, in his opinion, is important as a symbolic attitude to life.

Consequently, artistic creation, as opposed to role-playing in life, is a free realm. The artist is free and happy in the creative process, because what he or she creates is a result of his or her own conscious will, a will governed of course only by the necessities of the work of art itself and not by the rules of society. In his search for new theatrical forms, Evreinov was looking back to the past.

As mentioned in the Introduction, in 1907 fortune brought him into contact with a famous literary censor and aristocrat, Baron Nikolai Driezen. Driezen funded Evreinov’s creation of The Ancient (in some translations, Antique) Theatre (Starinnyi Teatr), which at the beginning Evreinov called the ‘Theatre Museum’. Evreinov’s interest turned to the Medieval theatre. His philosophy in creating this theatre was to reconstruct the theatre style, acting technique, decorations and sets of the Medieval past. He embraced and embodied the naivety of the way the actors in this period were performing, and the primitive nature of the medieval productions. In this style, if an actor plays an evil character, then he becomes a caricature of evil, an evil with no complexity or grey-areas. An evil that roars like an animal, with bulging eyes and teeth grinding. If the character is a joker or a comedian, he entertains the audience without pausing, he never has quiet or contemplative moments. The most important aspect to Evreinov of the Medieval style is that actors transform themselves into a different personality, rather than drawing on personal experience or personality. They give everything to the role, exaggerating the characteristics of the part to achieve a higher level of audience involvement. The medieval audience, which was full of imagination, believed the intensity, and became themselves part of the whole process of creation, and could even change the development of the play. Sometimes medieval audience members would get into physical or verbal conflict with the characters being portrayed, because they believed in the character so vividly and completely. The specifics of this actor/audience interaction would depend on where the performance was taking place: a church, a marketplace, or an actual purpose-built theatre. In that commitment and participation of both the actors and the audience, Evreinov saw the true Theatricality. The context could be primitive or naïve, but the transformation of what Evreinov calls the ‘magic form’ or ‘magic world’, in which rational thinking loses its

44 power, is where we can find real art and real Theatricality. We can see that the key factor here for Evreinov is the participation of the audience and the contribution of the audience to the theatrical context.124

On that note, Evreinov was a huge critic of Stanislavski’s belief in the importance of the ‘fourth wall’. At the same time, he despised Meyerhold’s interest in transmitting intellectual messages, which he thought did not connect or affect the audience on an emotional level. In both cases he believed the audience did not benefit from the experience of the reality presented on stage, because there was no catharsis for the audience. Evreinov asked for a fully immersive experience to be presented on stage, a fantastic, symbolic, magical world which should intoxicate the audience. And he believed the audience to be responsible for the success of this (in addition to the director and actors). Here we can also see Evreinov’s interest in ritual theatre, where the message or influence works directly on the unconscious, bypassing the conscious. Evreinov’s ideas were supported by others as an example: with the emergence of symbolism in Russian literature, the naturalist theatre soon became the object of criticism. In 1902 the symbolist poet Valerij Brjusov,125 who had been writing literary expositions on symbolism and had become a leading voice in the symbolist movement, wrote an article called Nenuzhnaja Pravda (The Truth That no one Needs) in which he launched an attack on naturalism in the theatre. Art, he wrote, should not explore everyday life, the world of phenomena, and above all it should not make a virtue out of copying life. Therefore art, including theatre, should be as abstract as possible: the three-dimensional stage of naturalism should be turned into a plane surface, against which the actors were to move in a stylised manner so that the performance most of all resembled a living bas-relief; and properties drawn from everyday life were to be removed and replaced by hints or even purely abstract patterns, with colour symbolism playing an important part.126

In the Apologia, Evreinov often reflects on the power and role of the subconscious mind. Only the subconscious can communicate through symbols in the same way that occurs in nature – a flower with bright colours to attract a pollinator, for instance. As an example, dance is a symbolic expression of human thought; the dance movements are a communication via symbols. This line of thinking drove his interest in Isadora Duncan, a dancer in whose performances Evreinov saw powerful symbolic expression. She was a popular figure at that time and according to Evreinov dominated the audience’s

45 subconscious and inspired some of Evreinov’s thoughts on Theatricality. According to Golub:

Isadora Duncan in Caesar and Cleopatra seems to have come out of a [gaudy peasant] canvas by Malyavin. Nakedness on stage, the purity of a half-dressed dancer with real emotional influence on the audience touched the curious Evreinov.127

His ambitious productions were savagely attacked by Vsevolod Meyerhold in the art journal Apollon (Apollo). The fulmination came at a critical moment in Meyerhold’s career; straight out of drama school, he had been a charter member of the Moscow Art Theatre but had left in 1901 after acrimonious disputes over casting, artistic decisions, and the distribution of shares. He then ran his own touring company throughout provincial Russia with some success, and Stanislavski invited him back to create an experimental studio (in 1905), which closed before it opened. He took the opportunity to launch a number of symbolist productions, which caused consternation among Komissarzhevskaya’s fans and the critics. After a year of dwindling box office returns, he was summarily dismissed and his replacement was Evreinov.

Although Meyerhold and Evreinov were both at the point in their career when they were discovering symbolism in theatre and evolving their styles of theatre, Evreinov moved forward and brought the theatre outside of its refined boundaries, which brings us to the next document that forms part of this research project. In the next translation Evreinov’s idea of Theatricality flows into life. The significance of this stage is that Evreinov takes theatre outside of the traditional understanding of theatre and he finds Theatricality in everything and everywhere.

46

87 The article was written for the actors of the Komissarzhevskaya theatre in 1908 as an introductory speech to his new style of theatre. Evreinov was inspired to collaborate with the actors. He was asked to cast Vera Komissarzhevskaya in a leading role for his version of Francesca da Rimini. This production was going to launch his career as an artistic director. Francesca da Rimini wasn’t originally a play but an episode in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Bk. 1). The Paulo and Francesca story was used by many painters and would-be playwrights. D’Annunzio wrote a version for Isadora Duncan (1901) and even Rachmaninov wrote an opera in 1906. The speech was published later in 1912 as an article in “Theatre as Such”. This version was published in “Demon Teatralnosti”, 2002, ed. Maksimov, Dzhurova. 88 Theatre was at its peak, full of experimental ideas. Among them Stanislavski as the father of modern psychological realism, Meyerhold in the areas of stylisation and the grotesque, and Tairov as the leading practitioner of musicalisation. These were innovative practitioners of the Silver Age period. 89 A quotation from An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen. The main protagonist, Doctor Stockmann, compared truth to something that needs to grow and change and mature in order to be appreciated and understood. 90 Here Evreinov is extending on the basis of the Ibsen quote, drawing attention to the other end of the timeline, the creation of a new idea and the difficulty in achieving acceptance. 91 Vera Fyodorovna Komissarzhevskaya (Russian: Ве́ра Фё́доровна Комиссарже́вская; 8 November 1864–23 February 1910) was one of the most celebrated actresses and theatre managers of the late Russian Imperial period. With her brother, Fyodor, she organised her own theatre company in 1901, in Saint Petersburg. 92 The production of the new season, Maeterlinck's Pelléas and Mélisande, sealed Meyerhold’s director’s career in that theatre. Vera Komissarzhevskaya lamented that “the actor in this new theatre turned out to be more suppressed by extreme stylization.” According to Komissarzhevskaya, she and Meyerhold had a lot of arguments about interpretation, which led to Meyerhold’s dismissal from the theatre. He was replaced by Evreinov as principal director of her Theatre (Myself and the Theatre, Fyodor Komissarzhevsky, 1930) 93 Maud Allan was born Beulah Maud Durrant in Toronto, Canada, in 1873. From an early age, Allan showed exceptional talents at arts and crafts which would be of great benefit to her in later life. She particularly excelled, however, in the musical arts and would go on to study to be a concert pianist at the San Francisco Grand Academy of Music. Whilst continuing her piano studies, Maud became increasingly interested in the art of dance, on which she would soon come to concentrate all of her considerable talents. 94 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ballet produced by Augustin Daly in 1888. 95 Evreinov’s reference to a “temple” here refers to the conservative viewpoint of theatre, in which practices and styles should remain the same (to be worshipped like Gods, to follow his metaphor), and where innovation is frowned upon. 96 “School of morality” here references a different viewpoint of theatre, as a medium for reflecting and transmitting moral values. 97 Evreinov is referring to directors who copy Stanislavski’s naturalistic way of staging. 98 He means that these aforementioned practitioners use the theatre as a platform for expressing their political ideas. 99 This is the first mention of “Theatricality” in Evreinov’s works, as the true meaning of theatre. He does not develop the idea further in this work. In subsequent essays however, he uses the term “Theatricality” to denote the application of theatrical methods and theories to everyday life. 100 The author does not specify the exact temporal range that he is referencing here. 101 In my opinion, Evreinov is saying that the recognition of “good” or “valuable” art is something that happens innately in people, a sort of instinct. He will develop the idea of “Theatricality” along these lines of “innate instinct” in future works. 102 Evreinov is talking about the “Starinnyi” (Antique) Theatre here, which he organized with Baron Driezen in 1907.

47

103 For example, the plays of Adam de la Halle and other later plays from the Medieval period such as Three Magi (Tri Volhva) that Evreinov staged while at the Starinnyi Theatre. For the eleventh century drama Three Magi, Evreinov wrote a special prologue and it was performed in Latin. According to Carnicke, “In this prologue, he placed a model medieval audience on stage who were far from passive observers … An involved audience would satisfy their drives more fully than a passive one could”. (Carnicke, 1989, p.57). 104 Adam de la Halle was a French poet and musician who lived during the 13th Century (1245- 1285). 105 Isadora Duncan’s dances produced the most profound impressions on Evreinov ‘s life by showing him the “simplicity and inevitability of real, honest art” (Golub, 1980, 9). 106 “Life borrows from Art” – this is the most important concept in Evreinov’s theories, his belief and cornerstone of Theatricality. To make a theatre of life is the duty of every artist … the stage must not borrow as much from life as life borrows from the stage. 107 “At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till art had invented them”. Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying”, in The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde, Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1997, 793. 108 Joseph Mallord William “J. M. W.” Turner, (1775–1851), the English Romanticist landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker. During his life Turner was considered a controversial artist but is posthumously regarded as having elevated landscape painting to a status of eminence. He is known best for his oil paintings, although he also developed great mastery in watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as “the painter of light”. His work can be categorised as Romantic pre-Impressionist. Some of his works are also seen as early examples of abstract art, many decades before the generally recognised establishment of that style in the early 20th century. 109 Perhaps Evreinov here is reminded of the Russian proverbs, which translate as “In your own country your genius will not be recognised” and “One cannot see greatness up close, only from a distance.” In Russian these would read “В вашей собственной стране ваш гений не будет признан" and “Не видно величия близко, только издалека”, respectively. 110 Perhaps, in this case for Evreinov, the audience as an active participant in theatre doesn’t have enough input, and if the theatre is too realistic it doesn’t leave enough to the imagination. 111 The scenic design and what we might term scenography is central to Evreinov’s thesis. 112 Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation [in English]. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984, 3. 113 Evreinov, N., ed. Demon Teatral'nosti. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002. 114 Ibid., 41. 115 Senelick, Laurence, ed. Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists: An Anthology. 1st ed., University of Texas Press Slavic Series, vol. 5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, 9. 116 Maximilian Voloshin, poet (May 28, 1877–November 8, 1932) was a representative of the Symbolist movement in Silver Age Russia. 117 Andrey Bely, poet, novelist, and literary critic (October 26, 1880–January 7, 1934) was also a Symbolist theorist and practitioner in Silver Age Russia and was a contemporary of Evreinov. 118 Bowlt, John, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900‐1920: Art, Life, & Culture of the Russian Silver Age. New York: E.P. Dutton, 2008. 119 Evreinoff, N. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York:B. Blom,1970, 37. 120 “In his production of D’Annunzio’s Francesca da Rimini (1908) at the Dramatic Theatre of Vera Komisarzhevskaya, Evreinov sought to create a picturesque and evocative rendering of the mood of the thirteenth century, while capturing also the absolute values and naïve perspective of its people … The result was a highly stylized production which, although not historically accurate in every detail, conveyed what Evreinov felt to be the essence of the spiritual life of that century”. Golub,1984,37.

48

121 Evreinov, N., ed. Demon Teatral'nosti. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002, 42. 122 Ibid., 43. 123 Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series XXVI, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989. 124 Carnicke, 57. 125 Valerij Brjusov (13 December, 1873–9 October, 1924) was one of the principal members of the symbolist movement in Silver Age Russia. His most famous works were the historical novels The Altar of Victory (1911-12) and The Fiery Angel (1907-8). 126 Ibid., 91. 127 Golub, 9.

49 3. New Theatrical Inventions128

Published in Moscow, Vremya, 1922129

Contents

I. What is hanging on the scales of the Universe? II. My meaning of ‘monumentum aere perennius’130 III. Life and Theatricality IV. Theatre – Mirror of Life V. The way we love ourselves VI. The mystery of real actors

I

What is hanging on the scales of the Universe?

A ribbon entwined in a little girl’s plait could be our answer.

We make fun of the extremely bright ribbon in her plait. Or don’t notice it. Or if we notice it, we don’t pay enough attention to it. Or if we pay attention to it, we do not ponder about such nonsense. But really, we should.

Firstly, if our planet is a cosmic necessity,131 then the appearance of humans on earth, along with flora and fauna and the animal kingdom, also follow as a logical and necessary extension.

Therefore, there is a demand for the continuation of the human race. Ergo, the above argument is that she is female and obliged to attract the male species, awaken his sexual feelings. Unconsciously perhaps, but it must be effective.

Universal law reveals itself through the subconscious and we should not call a silly flirt that which awakens the girl’s creativity, which theatrically and sexually transforms her appearance long before the mating ritual. Practice makes perfect.

Hence, the ridiculous bright ribbon becomes without fail part of the Universal Law and as important as anything on the Cosmic scale; not a trifle, but something more.132

50 Secondly, by plaiting the ribbon into the pigtail, the girl fulfils the act of transformation, which might rescue her from the tragedy of disappointment in this world. Not only the transformation of her own appearance! That ribbon might speak a message to us, as clearly as if the girl had said: “You thought I was obedient? But I am dissatisfied; I criticise and amend Mother Nature. She created me without a ribbon! She did not think it through, she was not able! I am not willing to accept this world as it was created by someone or something and I do not accept myself as I was created. I am in the process of transformation! I recreate myself! Yes, I am daring. I oppose my natural self in deference to an artificial self. I am different with that ribbon, I recreate myself with that ribbon”.

If we didn’t have this ridiculous ribbon that enables transformation for the girl who doesn’t accept life as it is, then how many girls would fade before the mating ritual, die bound by reality?!133 If the girls (and thus the humans) fade and die, and since humans are a necessary condition for the existence of the earth, then what would become of the Universe in which the earth is a necessary condition? This transitive condition requires that the humans survive in order for the universe to exist.

II

My meaning of ‘monumentum aere perennius’

Before now humans believed that God existed only in the monuments we built for Him. Many years passed before people came to the conclusion that God is everywhere and in everything.

It is also commonly thought that theatre is a physical structure. But a thousand years passed where people learned from me134 that theatre is everywhere and in everything.

III

Life and Theatricality

Theatre takes from life. And Theatre gives life.

There are two public theatres that exist at the moment.135

A third isn’t given (Tertium non datur).136 It doesn’t matter what other theatre people believe.

51 The principle of the creation of the first one is life itself. The principle of the second one is Theatricality.

The copy and original! Mirror and the reflection! Dependency and freedom! Mimicking and Play!

Realism and symbolism!137

Would you like a simple example to understand the difference between theatre created on principles of naturalism or realism and theatre built on principles of Theatricality?

Here it is:

When I see Chekhov’s plays performed by artists who were trained at Stanislavski’s school, I would like to shout out loud to those horribly naturalistic heroes,138

“Let’s go to the theatre! Yes! Let’s see and go? ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘Three Sisters’. And Zarechnaya from ‘Seagull’, and even Firs from ‘Cherry Orchard’. All of you, let’s go to the theatre! It will refresh you. It will transform you! Before your eyes will open beautiful new worlds. New horizons. Dull will become colourful! Hopeless becomes strong and desirable! Transformed!”

But do I need to explain, my dear reader, that I won’t take you to the Moscow Art Theatre?139 I will take you to the real theatre – a theatre which is far away from everyday reality, which doesn’t want to copy the dullness of everyday life.

IV

Theatre – Mirror of Life

When the naturalists preach that the theatre must be the exact mirror of life and reality, we must answer them that in this case, theatre as a mirror doesn’t contradict the symbolist principle (so much hated by naturalists) because every second of our life is theatre.

But is it worthwhile to slavishly reflect real life, in its amateur and raw form, within the theatre? Isn’t it the essence of the theatre to simultaneously crystalise, condense and simplify a particular event?

52 Otherwise, what is the theatre?

V

The way we love ourselves

The way we love ourselves is a product of theatricalisation or transformation. We can find the proof of this every time we consider ourselves in the mirror. We always amplify our sense of self-importance, synthesised with our intelligence and our courage, etc. We discover in the mirror not an objective reality, but rather we are looking for encouragement, motivation, flattery and we don’t even realise that we are doing so. And it will be as Nietzsche said, “Memory says, ‘I did that’. Pride replies, ‘I could not have done that’. Eventually, Memory yields”.140

VI

Who are the real actors?

No! For an understanding of ‘theatre’, we do not necessarily need stage decorations, lights, makeup, costumes, the text of the play and other props. Once, I was part of an amateur performance in which that particular practice was flourishing. Actors were playing the roles in an exaggerated manner. Their makeup was running down their face.

Their wigs were untidy. One actor couldn’t finish his line. Another was talking over him. Another forgot his entrance. To believe in such a performance was impossible. Even in a very engrossing performance you couldn’t believe that Treezvyozdchkin141 is not himself but rather is the character of Ivanov as stated in the theatrical program. And that Maria Ivanova is not Maria Ivanova, who is a married daughter of the theatre producer, but is rather a widow as the program says. That illusion was absolutely impossible.142

But the audience in the auditorium had big smiles on their faces, and would you believe, it seemed as if they were aesthetically satisfied (that’s what their faces were saying). They clapped loudly and together. They were giving many compliments and flowers to Maria Ivanova for her brilliant characterisation of her widow.

At the end, the real actors were actually in the auditorium and not on the stage as was mentioned in the theatrical program.143

53

128 Evreinov believed that he was the first practitioner to address theatre outside of the physical building. He constructed a philosophical attitude towards theatre that theatre is everywhere. 129 “Theatrical Inventions” was published in 1916 as a part of his collection of essays, “Theatre as Such”. A second edition of this article, named “New Theatrical Inventions” was published in the newspaper Vremya in 1922, just before his emigration. 130 “monumentum aere perennius” is a quote from the Roman poet, Horace. The full line reads “exegi monumentum aere perennius” (I have raised up a monument more enduring than brass) (Horace, Odes, 3, 30, 1). 131 Evreinov meant that the Universe couldn’t exist without a conscious higher power and the Earth is a part of this universal structure. 132 Evreinov expands the rules of theatre to the processes of life. He translates and sees the world through the lens of the theatre. He describes the development of humanity using theatrical principles. This sentence is one of the more extreme examples of his textual flourishes, not particularly straightforward in meaning. He is trying to be evocative with imagery and metaphor. 133 Evreinov suggested theatrical laws are more real than mundane everyday laws on which society operates. Theatricality helps overcome the psychological boundaries placed upon us by nature. “Reality” here is a reference to the preceding paragraph. To be “bound by reality” is to be denied the chance at transformation and transcendence afforded by Theatricality. 134 In the original 1916 version of “Theatrical Inventions” Evreinov compared theatre to religion and he suggested that people saw God as an idol and worshipped God in a particular place, and after thousands of years humans concluded that God is everywhere and in everything. In fact, Evreinov called his God “Theatrarch”, a term he coined based on the Russian word for ‘theatre’ – teatr – and crossed with the word ‘patriarch’. It is interesting to note that these references to God and religion were removed from the 1922 “New Theatrical Inventions” due to the strict atheism of the then-Communist state. 135 Here Evreinov refers to the Russian theatre scene of the beginning of the 20th century, a theatre oscillating between symbolism and naturalism. 136 Evreinov often used Latin expressions in his writing. In philosophy, this phrase refers to the “principle of the excluded middle” first formulated by Aristotle. It is a Latin translation of the original Greek and literally, “Tertium non datur” means “There is no third [alternative]” [Aristotle, On Interpretation 9, of mutually exclusive propositions]. Briefly, for a premise and its opposite/contradiction, one of them is true and one is false; no third state is possible. 137 Evreinov refers to the most profound theatre movements of the Russian theatre during the Silver Age – Stanislavski’s realism and Meyerhold’s symbolism. 138 Theatricality became an abusive word in the Art theatre. According to Carnicke, Evreinov believed that Stanislavski, carried away by his struggle against banality, destroyed genuine Theatricality because genuine Theatricality consists precisely in theatrically presenting theatrical performances (The Theatrical Instinct, 1989, 30). 139 This is another reference to Stanislavski; Evreinov saw himself as a potent force and alternative to Stanislavski’s realism. Evreinov was among the most hostile of Stanislavski’s critics, never missing an opportunity to mock him. Their enmity grew naturally due to Evreinov’s dedication to Theatricality vs. Stanislavski’s quest for realism. 140 “Beyond Good and Evil”, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886, Chapter IV: Maxims and Interludes. Nietzsche’s influence is significant to Evreinov’s development of Theatricality. Refer to Commentaries on Apologia for more discussion on Nietzsche’s influence on Evreinov. 141 This is a contrived name of an archetypal actor. In Russian, Treezvyozdchkin means “three-star actor” and he is using this name here to denote an average or mediocre actor.

54

142 Evreinov’s ideal actor is the one who goes to extremes in the service of his character and the performance. If the character is evil, the actor almost needs to roar with malice. In this paragraph, he is characterising the actors in some contemporary productions as not having that level of dedication to the performance. 143 Evreinov considers we are all the actors; the real actors are the audience and people in real life. Here Evreinov is saying that the audience plays an active role and he is emphasising the importance of audience involvement in theatrical production. But this cannot happen if the performance on stage is not completely immersive for the audience, which goes to the previous point about commitment by actors. In this case, the audience becomes a passive observer, repressing their creative imagination. And without the spectators playing their part, dynamic communication in the theatre is impossible.

55 3.1. Commentary

In this section, an analysis will be undertaken on the next stage of his thought- development regarding Theatricality, where Evreinov proclaims the term ‘Theatricality’ as an ‘Instinct of Transformation’. He expresses his belief that this instinct is a universal experience, a pre-aesthetic and hard-wired biological compulsion. New Theatrical Inventions reads as another short manifesto on Theatricality, expanding on the ideas from where he left off in Apologia for Theatricality, where he saw Theatricality more as simply a symbolic form of theatrical staging.

In New Theatrical Inventions, Theatricality appears to Evreinov to be an Instinct of Transformation, an instinct of comparison, channelled by humans when using their creative will against the natural instinct.

Man has one instinct about which, in spite of its inexhaustible vitality, neither history nor psychology nor aesthetics have so far said a single word. I have in mind the Instinct of Transformation, the instinct of opposing to images received from without images arbitrarily created from within, the instinct of transmuting appearances found in nature into something else, an instinct that clearly reveals its essential character in the conception of what is called Theatricality.144

Evreinov envisioned theatre as not being tied to a theatre building. Like an overwhelming tidal wave, it should break free of its confined building boundaries and start to influence life via theatrical tools of transformation. Theatricality comes outside of scenic confinements and integrates into the wider world. It meshes with our social lives. Evreinov finds it everywhere in simple everyday rituals and mundane activities. As he says in New Theatrical Inventions, “theatre is everywhere and in everything.”145

Evreinov believes the rules and laws of theatre can affect real-life processes. He discovered what he believed was a real-world connection between the laws of theatre and the laws of nature. He tried to find a unique and general philosophical method, based on the principles of theatre. One might say that he is trying to explain the fundamentals of existence using the vocabulary that is most familiar to him – that of theatre and performance. These grandiose ambitions led his contemporaries to variously describe him as a genius146 or a pretentious dilettante, for example:

56 Julij Ajhenvald complained that Evreinov defined Theatre in such broad terms and brought together such a multitude of diverse facts that he destroyed any logical framework with an extreme liberalism approaching intellectual anarchy. Such runaway logic… “carries the concept of theatre into an abyss of indefiniteness and countless haze”.147

Evreinov underlines the free creative will of individuals. As was mentioned before, for Evreinov Theatricality is an instinct for transformation; it is equal to the instinct of hunger or procreation. He now argues that Theatricality is a pre-aesthetic rather than aesthetic form, more universal and fundamental, with applications beyond the literal staging of performances.

For instance, Evreinov sees Theatricality as an early stage of human consciousness, a prerequisite for creative thinking. By early stage of civilization development, here we mean an ‘instinctual’ or ‘unconscious’ part of a desire to make the world a more harmonious and beautiful place, and this manifests as a will to transform ourselves and elements of the natural world around us.

He proclaims it as an instinct, a universal biological compulsion that exists in humans from birth. The most theatrical expressions would be seen, in Evreinov’s opinion, in children or in primitive humans.

The child creates sometimes literally out of nothing; most trivial and insignificant material can satisfy him. He is a real little Creator who can work wonders even without clay.148

Under the influence of a person’s family upbringing, their education, their social and material circumstances of life, the theatrical instinct slowly disappears.

In Theatre in Life an interesting example of the role played by theatrical instinct in the cultural development of mankind is to be found in some observations about the role of clothing and body decoration in the history of our clothes:

a naked savage woman, she has blackened her eyelids and eyebrows and dyed her hair in the vain but worthy attempt at looking like a flower. She doesn’t strive to cover her nudity, but merely gives it a different aspect. Yet, as the savage progresses, decorations used by him

57 with a purpose of adorning his body are getting more and more numerous and complicated. Finally, at a certain stage of theatrical evolution, some sort of costume crystallises out of these decorations.149

Evreinov goes a little deeper into the psychological nature of the theatrical instinct. This is evident where the first humans had a desire to transform. In other words, it’s the beginning of realisation for early humans that physical transformation evolves and influences the soul as well as spiritual change. Evreinov casts Theatricality in a spiritual light when he says:

Men progress much more rapidly in the civilisation of his theatrical sense than in the civilisation of his other spiritual qualities.150

As Golub underlines, “Evreinov perceived life as a continuous battle in which Theatricality can help insure our salvation”.151 In general Evreinov categorises the modern everyday life that we experience as a boring and stereotypical machine, unique to our contemporary world. The main reason he sees it as stereotypical is because it is without a stamp of individual attitude. In the theatre of life, people are obliged to follow social rules and play socially acceptable parts according to society’s conventions at that time.

Likewise, actors are performing given parts in the Theatre. That is where the major differences between Stanislavski and Evreinov lie.

In Evreinov’s opinion it (realism on stage) would turn the audience into passive observers, repressing their creative imagination. Without spectators playing their part, dynamic communication in the theatre is impossible. Furthermore, this stifling realism takes the fun out of going to the theatre. Only give my imagination a shove and I myself will add what I need. If you give me everything on stage that is in life, what is left for my imagination to do?152

In New Theatrical Inventions, Evreinov engages in polemics against contemporary theatre practitioners, attacking the naturalism of Stanislavski’s staging of Chekhov’s plays.153 He calls it ‘copying the dullness of everyday life’. In general, professional theatre for Evreinov is as a prison to Theatricality, because the contemporary stage was influenced by the so- called boring details of everyday life which left professional actors without the freedom to

58 introduce new dimensions through their performances. In fact, he says that an actor performing for money can be compared to a prostitute. He compares this type of acting to the free theatrical expression of an unprofessional actor. He drew attention to a staging of Three Sisters and emphasised that the director gave an allusion to real life.154

I remember how I laughed when I saw for the first time the ultra- naturalistic production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. I laughed because I realised that the stage manager, who believed most earnestly that he had discovered ‘new ways’, moved instead in the direction of least resistance. Indeed, I could knock Stanislavski off his feet by saying that this ultra-naturalistic production was still far too conventional and theatrical.

Evreinov believed that to develop a more realistic setting, one might rent a house instead of a theatrical stage, and bring actors and audiences together so that the audience could observe the scenes from a play in a real room, in a real environment, where the fourth wall disappears.155

Unfortunately for Evreinov, the dogmatic realism156 of the Moscow Art Theatre became so- called ‘socialist realism’ that would influence the development of Soviet theatre in Russia for decades. According to Evreinov, the intelligent audience from the Moscow Theatre had lost their spontaneous ability to day-dream, which was second-nature to them as children, but had been lost in the transition to modern adulthood. Evreinov’s theories asked the audience to become completely involved and absorb what was happening on stage.

The transformative abilities of human nature are so important to Evreinov that in New Theatrical Inventions he dissects the processes and becomes really interested in how it works and how it influences the psyche and physiology. He believes that humans have the ability to heal themselves by using theatrical tools to convince themselves that they are well. He says in his article Animal Kingdom,

…it seems to me that the time is coming when we will at last realize that there is just as much theatre in nature and life as there is of nature in theatre.157

59 Evreinov’s opinion on Theatricality takes a turn towards human basic desire. Evreinov believed that there is in man a pre-aesthetic will to play and subconscious need to transform himself. Evreinov refused to conform and accept the attributes that a person received from birth. He was an avid believer in ‘theatre for oneself’ based on the highly subjective role of art in the life of the individual and society. According to Golub:

The actor in the Theatre for Oneself was the Evreinovian theatrical equivalent of Nietzsche’s superman. Nietzsche said that people are often only actors playing themselves. Morality and the growth of culture are based upon service to this ideal. The man we call ‘great’ is merely acting out his own ideal rather than looking outside or above for a saviour, man must search within himself. In the rediscovery and revitalisation of the theatre lies the salvation of man.158

Evreinov’s primary and fundamental argument against Stanislavski’s psychological theatre is based on the belief that Stanislavski has things the wrong way around. Stanislavski’s naturalism tries to bring the laws of real life and nature into a theatrical performance and bind the theatrical performance with those rules; whereas for Evreinov it is obvious that theatricalisation is at the root of the natural laws, that theatre dominates and defines life, not the other way around. In the article New Theatrical Inventions, he develops an argument connecting sexual behaviour with Theatricality through an example of a young girl, who ties colourful ribbons in her hair and practices flirtation long before she is ready to take a mate. She is transforming her appearance and practising a pre- mating ritual a long time before she is actually sexually mature. Evreinov is equating sexual, Freudian, unconscious behaviour with ‘Theatricality’.

Evreinov is talking about theatrical instinct as a ‘will to theatre’, which belonged to humans since the dawn of the species, as a pre-aesthetic motivation, pre-dating even religion. For instance, many pre-civilisation tribes past and present would not have ‘God’ or ‘gods’ as such, but they would have the theatrical ability to express their wills and desires. As an example of theatricalisation of life, they might stylise their hunting practices into dances. “There is truly something divine in this ‘will to the theatre’”.159

Logically, the laws of theatre were essential for the evolution of the human species. The Instinct of Theatricality is an equal biological law, and the discovery of human nature

60 becomes the task of new theatre. It is important to say that Evreinov’s theories are full of contradictions and tautologies. Like other great philosophers, he will find himself arguing against his own theories at some points, as he goes deeper and deeper into the philosophy and tries to discover the fundamental truths at the heart of ‘Theatricality’.

He believes that a new era of ‘theatrical mask’ is being realised in real-life, being expressed through so-called social masks.

All our education is the process of learning the part of an ‘urban’, sympathetic, sensible, collected and courageous human being, that is to say, the part of the favourite hero of the modern drama in life.160

Evreinov also sees Theatricality in terms of global historical movements. As an example, he contends that theatre has flourished in the past when control was in the hands of aristocrats. Golub writes: “He [Evreinov] cites ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Spain, France, England, Germany, and Russia at various stages in their histories as examples.”161 Although Evreinov observes Theatricality and explains it in his views about civilizations, “…enamoured from the start of what it felt to be history’s three great civilizations: Ancient Egypt and Greece and medieval Europe.”162 In his article Theatre for Oneself he brings forward the example of Ludwig II as a perfect account of the theatricalisation of life, where a king uses his human potential without boundaries or inhibition, and theatricalises his life. Life becomes for Ludwig exactly as he imagines it should be; he becomes a ‘Creator’ in his own existence, shaping his world as he sees it. For Evreinov, ‘theatricalisation of life’ has nothing to do with ‘the theatre’ itself. This is reinforced over and over again by his philosophical concept of Theatricality as a foundational human instinct. The main important principle of ‘theatricalisation of life’ is a ‘theatre for oneself’.

The main theme of New Theatrical Inventions is the further development of the idea that theatre is everywhere, theatre dominates our life, we borrow from theatrical roles in our behaviours, and we are born with the ability to perform different roles. And if one masters that ability in life, one will be able to transform oneself. Evreinov further developed his theories, with the concept of Theatricality as instinct, toward therapeutic applications; and in the process, he referred to Aristotle as the first person who believed that theatre has a cleansing effect:

61 Theatre cures the audience. The Great Aristotle, in his doctrine of ‘Catharsis’, had stressed the curative value of a well-staged tragedy.163

His second phase of thinking about Theatricality is best summed up by this page from Evreinov’s article The Theatrical Instinct:

The instinct of theatricalisation which I claim the owner to have discovered maybe best described as the desire to be different, to do something that is different, to imagine oneself in surroundings that are different from the common place surroundings of our everyday life. It is one of the mainsprings of our existence, of that which we call progress, of change, evolution and development in all departments of life. We are all born with this feeling in our soul we are all essentially theatrical beings.164

The third stage Theatre in the Future develops Evreinov’s ideas for using Theatricality as tools to be integrated into everyday life. Evreinov laid the foundation for an interdisciplinary approach to theatre through his ingenious visualization of theatre in life.

62

144 Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom,1970, article “The Theatrical Instinct”, 22. 145 Evreinov, Nikolai. New Theatrical Inventions, in Demon Teatralnosti. Edited Vadim Maksimov. Translated by Inga Romantsova. 146 One of the contemporaries who called Evreinov a “genius” was the poet Kamenski, who developed a great admiration for Evrenov. In his book Kniga ob Evreniove he largely focuses on Evreinov’s childhood and calls him a “theatrical wunderkind”. Refer to Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989, 189. 147 Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation, Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984, 57. 148 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Will to the Theatre” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 37. 149 Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life, 28. 150 Ibid., 31. 151 Golub, 54. 152 Carnicke, 59. 153 Evreinov, N. New Theatrical Inventions, In Demon Teatralnosti, 95. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Translated by Inga Romantsova. 154 Evreinov is referring to the first production of Three Sisters directed by Stanislavski in 1901. Evreinov’s first impression of this play was underwhelming. He believed the characters to be under developed and thought the director paid too much attention to the unnecessary naturalistic details. Allen, David. Performing Chekhov. London, UK: Routledge, 2000, 27-28. 155 Here Evreinov anticipates a late-20th century theatrical trend, where audience and performer creatively coexist without the stage as such. One contemporary example of this is Bobby Baker’s Kitchen Show. Bobby Baker invited the audience to her own home. She staged her production in her own kitchen. Though the audience consisted of a little more than 20 people, she served them hot drinks as she would do in real life. The only indication of a performance was that a spoon was stuck to her hand. She broke the fourth wall, sharing her ‘despised domestic chores’ that constituted being a housewife. She allowed the audience to make their own meanings, and challenged the separation between actors and spectators. This type of contemporary performance correlates with Evreinov’s desire to keep the audience as part of the creative process of theatre. 156 It is important to mention that in his articles Evreinov does not distinguish between naturalism and realism as discrete styles and uses the terms interchangeably. 157 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Theatre in The Animal Kingdom” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 21. 158 Golub, 59. 159 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Will to the Theatre” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 36. 160 Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 50. 161 Golub, 58. 162 Ibid., 5. 163 Evreinov, Nikolai. “Theatrotherapy” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 27. 163 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Theatrical Instinct” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 23. 164 Ibid., 23.

63 4. Theatre in the Future

“…that all this world was as it were a painted curtain before things

unguessed at…” Herbert George Wells165

In the 19th century, Edmond de Goncourt predicted that in about fifty years the book would have killed the theatre. This remains an example of how difficult it is to talk about the future of the theatre with even minimal accuracy.

Аndré Duvernois’ answer to the theatre survey carried out recently by the ‘Les Marges’ magazine166 shows clearly that something quite different has happened. In fact, people’s interest in theatre increases every day, in contrast to their interest in books:

“I used to be a literary critic”, he says, “and at that time I always heard: ‘What? You have to read every new book? You are so brave!’ Now I am a theatre critic and I am told: ‘What? You get to see every dress rehearsal? You are a lucky man!’”

Now we can observe books being squeezed out by theatre not only in the area of entertainment, but also in the scientific and educational arenas. Edmond de Goncourt was so over-confident in his opinion that he couldn’t foresee the significant revelation of cinema.

Where one can make excuses like sickness, conservative stubbornness or aesthetic principles to avoid visiting the cinema (the ‘den of the mob’), it would appear that one would miss out on the cultural experiences and sharing of ideas available to those faithful to cinema.

If you talk to those people seen as culturally unsophisticated peasants, followers of cinema, you would have to change your opinion about their ‘stupidity’ and their ‘unculturedness’.

What haven’t they seen in that den of the 20th Century during their frequent excursions ‘to the shop’, ‘for a stroll’ or openly ‘just for an hour at the theatre’! What haven’t they learned there! How countries appear as beautiful as they are when portrayed on cinema screens

64 such as the ‘Union’ or ‘Crystal Palace’167 is what makes you want to visit! What events haven’t they been made to witness by wise Pathé!168

They have recently been scared by the words like ‘landscape’ and ‘drama’, they confused ‘Switzerland’ and ‘Shakespeare’, but now they are able to talk sensibly about the beauty of Swiss waterfalls and Shakespeare’s heroes. They have seen so much and they know so much! They don’t need to read Quo Vadis by Sienkiewicz, Terrible Revenge by Gogol, Steep by Goncharov, Keys of Happiness by Verbitskaya169 and another hundred fictional masterpieces no matter how good or bad they are: all those books will pass in front of their hungry eyes in the form of interesting and entertaining cinema.

When I heard in a tram as one housemaid advised another “to see the picture ‘Life of Wagner’”, trying to explain that “even though that greatest man was of a little height, you know, like Napoleon, remember they showed him in ‘Saturn’”.170 I suddenly realised with great clarity that they were not learning from books or schools fiat lux171 of the everyman education but from this genuinely accessible popular theatre whose lessons are impressively convincing and unforgettably solid with its figurative language.172

The famous psychologist Stanley Hall173 drew attention to the dramatic instinct that is found in children’s unusual love of theatre and cinema. According to his opinion this instinct, for teachers, is “a true discovery of a new force in human nature”.174

People have begun to use this force everywhere as a method of contemporary schooling, and the dramatisation of learning material in America is widespread.

N. Techer175 was absolutely right when he pointed out that the dramatic method is so valuable because instead of long verbal methods it offers a short version of practical learning. In this case a pupil deals with ideas expressed in tangible forms. He gets influenced by objects that are alive, unlike deadly-bookish material; by subjects that are in motion rather than motionless ones. In the heart of this method lies the principle of so called ‘motor action essence’, which says that the thought of a motion is the start of that motion, since it stimulates some muscle or a gland (for example the thought of something sweet quite often stimulates the oozing out of saliva etc.) On that basis says N. Techer and other followers of the dramatic method of education, since each idea, each thought contains the force for fulfillment, for corresponding action, then the clearer, the closer that idea is to the reality, the sooner and stronger it will induce action; images received from

65 the cinematography film or the theatre stage are – in Techer’s opinion – the strongest and the most active because they are almost real or close to reproducing reality.

It also occurs that the theatre is the most practical and powerful tool not only in the question of science education, but also in the question of upbringing.176 In this case the utilitarian significance of the theatre is deduced from the following unusual analogy: when we put various antitoxins into an organism, we create immunity, i.e. non-susceptibility to the contagious diseases. The same kind of immunity for a psychological organism, in regards to spiritual infections, is achieved by input into a soul of various scenic images, misdeeds, social crimes and vices.177 Contemplating the immediate future of the theatre, I am, generally speaking, far from expecting the artistic flourishing of the dramatic actor’s art; two thousand years of experience doesn’t give us reason to suppose something higher in this regard than the stage truth of Sophocles’ or Aristophanes’ time.

Furthermore, I can picture the magnitude of the pure utilitarian usage of the future theatre in various areas of our education rather than the magnitude of its technical-stage achievements.

I deduce that in all probability, my prophecy based on revealing the reality of the present will come true, and I say:

In the study room of a student, a scholar, and most probably of any curious person of the near future, the major part will be taken not by books but by modern cinematic accessories.

The reader of the next century will not be joining a library-storage of books, but the library-storage of film tapes and reels.

If we take for example whoever saw in our cinematography the presentation of very complicated operations performed by the famous surgeon Doyen,178 then he would understand how important it would be for the young doctor to repeatedly watch the films in his own private room without audience interferences. Fifty or one hundred times that wonderful presentation, learning separate parts of it by stopping frame-by-frame until he understands every minute detail of the procedure.

Geographical place, the history of the world, shown in dramatic form with detailed scenarios and bright pictures/scenes and performed well in the future will be an

66 unprecedented and popular part of the electronic library shelf of any intelligent thinker (person). Even zoology, entomology and bacteriology wouldn’t be exceptions.

Every one of us will have their own Theatre, a ‘theatre for oneself’, so to speak, which consists of any possibility and desire, of choosing the place and company and scenario for our own satisfaction and achievement of any kind of intellectual curiosity, and of course it would not be limited by historical content.179

The reading of Romantic novels will become boring compared to the home Theatre scenic reincarnation in the future.180

It will be a very believable presentation in comparison to the Cinematography we have now; what we have now will become a useless toy, truly deserving of dismissive laughter. It will be three dimensional, colourful, truly magic, with scenically-chosen colours; the human voice will sound in a more aesthetic form serving the most beautiful, dramatic concept.181

It will become a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’,182 of the sort that Richard Wagner did not even dream about in Bayreuth.

Such a graceful product183 has the capacity to produce the most gorgeous women, the most talented actors of the best school, the most rehearsed orchestral symphony, the most graceful dancers, the bravest acrobats, decorations and costumes of the greatest artists in the world, plenty of extras, and a sea of admiring audience members. And each of those wonders of Pandora will be priceless or cost nothing because there will be so much interest in them. The tickets definitely won’t be more expensive than a book.

Our grandchildren (I’d love to believe that it will be our grandchildren) will be buying paintings of dreams, which they will be enjoying lying in bed vis-à-vis watching a cinema screen. The waking dreams will fill the whole room and the soul of the viewers before they even close their eyes and fall asleep…. What beautiful nights there will be for our grandchildren, to have a cinematic dream before a real dream. Really, I envy them, especially when you consider that they will be able to choose their dreams depending on their taste, and even the strangest tastes will be accommodated. The developments towards these sensual and refined forms cannot be avoided; they are inevitable.

67 The theatre as such in the future is like a theatre for oneself, it will cover the interests of the whole spectrum from those of a spoiled child to those of the cruellest individual, or those with perverted brains. It will include a theatre of huge cruelty, a theatre for an individual insatiable audience, an audience who demands more and more and is never satisfied – the spectrum of the audience goes from the individuals with high morality to the lower hysterical degenerates. The contemporary theatre is not able to simultaneously satisfy such a spectrum as a baby, an elderly person, a puritan, a geisha. The awakening of such cinematography, of this way of living, in the very near future will theatricalise the lives of individuals. One doesn’t need to look for mass theatrical expression in one particular building, at one particular hour, because that experience of mass catharsis, theatrical catharsis,184 will be everywhere, all the time.

Why can’t we imagine, for example, that part of the Russian nation, the part that won’t die from alcoholism and corruption, would like to use that global invention as an entrée to cosmopolitan dominance; with the talent that exists now on Russian soil, one day it can win over the world with the ancient and barbarian beauty of its new theatrical mastery. It certainly will restructure the life of people as simply as laughter flows forth from a child, and with a child’s innocence, and on such wonderful theatrical beginnings that the rest of the world will bow to the Russian innovations as did the ancient Roman women who were overcome by the wisdom and beauty and strength of the Huns. And the Huns appreciated the wisdom and grandiosity of Roman civilisation, but got deathly bored with it and in their impatience destroyed it. Who knows? I’m certainly sure that a specific type of audience, what we call a theatrical public, will exist in the future at the celebrations of artistic and sporting events, and such mass events are perfect for cinematography with their spectacular nature and single focal point. The theatre in the future will be opposite to the contemporary one we have now; it will be an honest theatre for oneself. The theatre for oneself, with its improvisation,185 will grow and prove itself as a theatre where the audience and the actors are the same.186 It will be one of the most refined and delicate art forms.

68

165 Quotation from The World Set Free by H.G. Wells, 1914. The novel explores issues of nuclear energy, nuclear war, and the resulting end of bourgeois civilization. This quote is a translation from Evreinov’s Russian, but does not give bibliographical details of this Russian version. I believe it was a translation of the original publication of The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind published by Macmillan and Co., 1914, 6. 166 Popular French magazine at the beginning of the 20th Century which employed Andre Duvernois (1875-1937) as a writer, novelist, dramaturge, and theatre critic. The magazine frequently explored contentious social issues of the contemporary period and was popular amongst the intellectual class. 167 Cinemas in St Petersburg called “УНИОН” (The Union) and “КРИСТАЛ ПАЛАС” (Crystal Palace). 168 Pathé (1863-1957) was a French film producer and entrepreneur, who created and presided over a film distribution empire. He was interested in the mass audience that cinema was capable of reaching (in contrast to theatre). 169 These examples were popular works amongst the intelligentsia at the time, and perhaps these in particular were chosen by Evreinov because they related to the search for happiness. Especially, he was interested in the novel by Verbitskaya focusing on critical analyses of contemporary relationships between men and women during the rise of feminism. For Evreinov, the search for happiness and fulfillment is central in his theatrical theories 170 Saturn was a famous cultural entertainment institution, established circa 1907, where drama, opera, and operetta performances were given. Originally called Biofonauksetophon (abbreviated Biofon), it was renamed Saturn in October 1909, and was renamed again in 1933 as the Cinema of the Masses due to its popularity. 171 Fiat lux (Latin) literally means “Let there be light” meaning that the knowledge will be coming not necessarily from written books or formal schooling, but directly through the visual three- dimensional pictures or “figurative language” as Evreinov describes it. 172 Ibid. 173 G. Stanley Hall (1846-1924), a well-known American psychologist and educator. He proposed many theories on childhood development and worked on measuring the effects of education systems on the minds of children. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall's major books were Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime and Religion (1904) and Aspects of Child Life and Education (1921). His most direct influence in shaping our view of humankind came from his theories about adolescence. He was the most cited psychologist of the 20th century and is still regarded as influential. 174 Here Evreinov is paraphrasing Hall’s idea of alternative learning at schools: Hall objected vehemently to the emphasis on teaching traditional subjects, like Latin, mathematics, science and history in high school, arguing instead that high school should focus more on the education of adolescents than on preparing students for college. 175 N. Techer, American scholar. Evreinov refers to the popular article, “Dramatization as one of the methods of contemporary pedagogy”. Techer developed a methodology of dramatisation of primary school subjects to enhance the success of learning outcomes. As Evreinov’s article contains a secondary reference I was unable to reference or locate more information about Techer. According to Evreinov, Techer and Bryce were supervisors of Primary schools in Newton, Massachusetts where they developed and initiated a system of dramatisation of school subjects in early learning. 176 Evreinov thought that theatre plays an important part in education, and subjects can be dramatised in order to increase the effectiveness of pedagogical techniques. He also saw therapeutic applications in theatre, and went on to develop these applications in the essay “Theatrotherapy”, Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 123. 177 As an example, Evreinov extends the idea in the article “Crime as a by-product:”

69

Take the contemporary movies with their detective films, with pictures of fight, murder and kidnapping, with tasteless spectacles of fabulous wealth and luxury, with fantastic adventures leading to the acquisition of such wealth and luxury, etc. What influence can such a theatre have on spectators, especially on youthful ones? Indeed, it is not mere coincidence that crimes are more than often highly theatrical and that the theatre – also more than often – uses crime, as one of its favorite subjects. That there is a strange psychological kinship between the theatre and crime one can hardly deny. Vices and crimes are shown on the stage and have a highly moral purpose of providing that they are always punished and that the virtuous invariably triumphs. “Crime as a by-product” in Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 119. 178 Eugène-Louis Doyen (1859-1916) was a French surgeon and author of Atlas of microbiology (1897) and Treatise on therapeutic surgery and operative techniques (1908), who attended the World Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897. 179 Evreinov suggests that a person should approach real-life in the same way that an actor approaches a part – with earnestness and imagination. A person’s attitude towards their own “acting” must be as serious as it can be, “in a perfect earnest matter, for otherwise the whole affair won’t be worth a nickel”. Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Theatre for Oneself” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970. 180 Though some ideas about Theatricality contradict each other or become too complicated for a contemporary reader to understand, it is important to underline that Evreinov was able to accurately predict the development of cinematography to the point that it has reached today, including home entertainment systems, DVDs, and video on demand. 181 Evreinov saw great potential in the burgeoning art form of cinema, especially its ability to affect and move audiences using the argument that cinema can reach the unconscious mind in a way that theatre cannot, due to the intense realism of the images shown. 182 This is a distorted use of the Wagnerian concept of gesamtkunstwerk (a syncretic work of art is a complete, unified work of art). Wagner’s idea of a universal artwork or a synthesis of the arts proposed in the mid-nineteenth century an artistic form which combines all types of arts, such as music, poetry and dance, but in Evreinov’s interpretation synthetic art is taking on a new aesthetic form. 183 Here Evreinov is using the word “product” in context as “cinema product” or “a movie”. 184 Evreinov explains the doctrine of catharsis in his article “Theatrotherapy” in the following way: “…the basic principle of this doctrine seems to be clear: looking at the development of a tragedy and indulging in a sort of mental complicity with the crimes committed by actors, the spectator gives thereby an imaginative satisfaction to his own passions and desires. His soul is thus purged and purified of all that is evil, obscure and criminal”. (Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 126.) 185 Evreinov’s improvisation means: “take your acting as in a perfectly earnest manner, for otherwise the whole affair won’t be worth a nickel” (Evreinov, Nikolai. The Theatre in Life. 127). 186 Evreinov’s dream is that the audience and the performers will share the same viewpoint, the same understanding of the situation, which will lead to a particular effect in all participants (catharsis). It is interestingly emphasised in contemporary articles. As an example, Haidecke says that “Theatres are to be understood as functioning as a contact zone” and Caroline Heim claims “Theatre fans form vital audience communities that contribute much to the theatrical event”, in Popular Entertainment Studies, Vol. 7, 1-2, 20-54.

70 4.1. Commentary

Theatre in the Future underlines another important evolution in Evreinov’s concept of Theatricality, in which he significantly broadens its definition beyond the limits of traditional ‘theatre’ to encompass the ability of an individual to affect change in themselves and others through theatrical behaviour. Theatricality becomes a lens through which he can view any aspect of life, behaviour, relationships, and change. These developments and refinements to his theories came partially as a result of his observing the beginnings of cinematic innovations and the burgeoning concept of image-making.

In my opinion Evreinov had an extraordinary vision for the future. It would be like having a crystal ball and seeing into future contemporary homes, which have ‘movie libraries’ instead of a library comprised of books. Homes with allocated theatre spaces with huge plasma TVs, surround sound systems, Blue-Ray DVDs, all producing high quality cinematic pictures so real for human eyes. Also, colourful movies on demand; movies, which replace the reading of the books for some. A child watching his or her favourite moving story on the iPad (called ‘paintings of dreams’) before bedtime was foreseen by Evreinov:

Our grandchildren (I’d love to believe that it will be our grandchildren) will be buying paintings of dreams, which they will be enjoying lying in bed vis-à-vis watching a cinema screen.187

He discusses cinema, a burgeoning art at the time of writing, describing cinema as a medium for increased popularisation and democratisation of theatre. Evreinov believes that the increased consumption of theatrical works and content (via cinema) would awaken dormant theatrical instincts in the populace. Cinema makes theatrical works and expression more accessible to the masses than ever before, due to its affordability.

Evreinov also draws conclusions, based on his perceptions of cinema consumption by the public, believing that a person’s choice of cinematic works will mirror their will for transformation. For example, if someone chooses to go and see a film about travelling, Evreinov believes that this is driven by their internal desires. Furthermore, he describes the experience of cinema consumption as transformative – when viewers see cinematic representations of foreign lands, they feel like they have actually been there. As an evolution of this thought process, he moved forward the idea of ‘theatre for oneself’ from a mode or frame for consuming theatre, to a philosophy for living, where individuals learn

71 to exercise their natural desire for transformation. In his trilogy Theatre for Oneself, he underlines that when a person gets in touch with their theatrical instinct, there is a conscious decision to develop a particular course and follow a particular role, commensurate with the purpose of achieving their desires and fantasies. In Carnicke’s words:

While Evreinov’s advocacy of theatre in life grows quite naturally out of his postulation of theatre as instinct, he further supports his projection for the future of theatre in everyday circumstances by placing it within the context of artistic evolution in general…Evreinov demands the elimination of theatre on stage in favor of the creation of theatre in everyday life…In touch with the innate theatrical instinct, everyone would consciously develop roles and dramas…become actor, director, and playwright of his or her own life….theatre for oneself is simply an exalted form of self-dramatisation…Individuals must learn once again to exercise the natural drive for transformation.188

Theatre for Oneself is directed to reviving the theatrical instinct in ordinary people. As with the concept of Monodrama, it relies on core thoughts that place personal identification with the main character at the centre of theatrical experience. Evreinov assumes that identification with the protagonist is a universal phenomenon.

Evreinov believed that the spectator will relate only to that stage action which he can call his drama, which he can co-experience with the character in the play as if he, the spectator, were playing the role.189

Evreinov is exploring the new emerging media of cinematography because of, in my opinion, the limitation of Monodramas in conventional theatre staging. Audiences cannot fully immerse themselves in the performances because it is inescapable that what is happening on stage is not real. Technical machinery of the stage cannot respond to subtle changes in the protagonist’s mood or tone, so it is an illusion of true audience immersion. Cinema, by contrast, has been more successful in maintaining these subjective illusions due to the greater realism innate in the medium. The very dynamics of the relationship between cinema and viewer, as opposed to theatre and viewer, lends itself to a greater

72 probability and greater degree of audience immersion and suspension of disbelief. Watching a recording evokes what Evreinov calls the ‘logic of imagination’:

The views I hold on Theatre for Oneself are a logical conception of the theatre in general sense of the world. We should not forget that there exists such a thing as logic of imagination which has literally nothing to do with the logic of the mind.190

Evreinov advocates Monodrama and Theatre for Oneself as ways of getting in touch with pre-aesthetic and instinctual concepts of Theatricality. But monodrama in theatre, and monodrama in cinema which followed, are both illusions and facsimiles of true audience participation. Only in the further evolution of Monodrama, into Theatre for Oneself, does the individual become one with the play, because ‘the play’ is now their life, their reality:

Indeed, the hour is ripe for ‘the theatre for oneself’, for this new form of theatrical art.191

Evreinov is preaching the importance of a free and independent ‘theatre for oneself’ or ‘theatre of one will’, in which the director, the actor and the audience all merge into shared consciousness in which they all become, or at least empathise strongly with, the protagonists. Achieving this level of engagement is a ‘subtle art’ and is the main way of implementing an instinct for transformation. Evreinov believed that the theatre for oneself, with its improvisation, would grow and prove itself as a theatre where the audience and the performers share the same point of view, the same understanding of the situation, which will lead to a particular effect in all participants, through catharsis for example. He advocates in Theatre in the Future the idea that theatre can help with one’s search for self-respect and happiness. Further developing the concept of theatrotherapy in his article, we can also see his interest in the potential for theatre to serve a therapeutic function:

It’s the magic of Theatre, and nothing else, that gives you a new consciousness, a new scale of feelings, a new interest in life and a new will to live. And in this will to live, as we know, lies the secret of our victory over many bodily ills.192

73 Evreinov also promotes a dramaturgical model for society. In order to succeed, a person must choose the appropriate ‘masks’ to receive a desired set of behaviour patterns from society. Role playing, which he sees as the exercise of our innate theatrical instinct, had a therapeutic value as well. The most obvious example for Evreinov was the acting-out of an emotional problem in order to resolve it.

Evreinov is building on Shakespeare’s formula of “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”193. In his opinion, we are playing a character who is choosing to be psychologically challenged or depressed (for instance). With the instinct for transformation, a person can transfigure the way they behave and their view of themselves.

Evreinov calls ‘theatre for oneself’ a conscious ‘direction in life’:

It has two sides: a theatre for yourself is not just, say, playing out in the light of the role of the ‘belle of the ball’, ‘aristocratic lion,’ ‘reckless person,’ ‘artistic nature’ or ‘charming cynic’, but also the perception of what is happening around as representations. A variation of ‘theatre for oneself’ is, for example, to take a cab and ride around the city, watching the rushing home crowds, the carriages ... It’s called ‘live cinema’.194

According to Evreinov the will to live makes us undergo a thorough self-transformation, that is to say, a therapeutic masquerade. The method of mentally overcoming disease or problems is nothing but a form of self-transformation, by imagining oneself healthy, well, and acting accordingly. Moreover, Evreinov thought we actually could help ourselves get well. ‘Play a role well and you will live up to it’ is his quintessential idea of Theatricality.

Later in his article ‘Theatrotherapy’ Evreinov quotes Aristotle’s doctrine of ‘catharsis’, wherein he stresses the value of a well-staged tragedy:

Looking at the development of a tragedy and indulging in a sort of mental complicity where the crimes committed by actors, the spectator gives thereby an imaginative satisfaction to his own passions and desires. His soul is thus purged and purified of all that is evil, obscure and criminal.195

74 Another application of using theatre in life is the use of dramatisation in pedagogical techniques and methods. Analysing the practices of the famous American educators, Techer and Stanley Hall, who are the pioneers of dramatisation in the teaching of students at primary and secondary schools, Evreinov displays in this article the underlying importance of dramatisation in education. He bases this importance upon children’s fundamental love of play, when young students can use their innate ability to create a fun, playful situation, and dramatise a particular historical event or re-enact a geographical place:

The intensity of the child’s ‘will to the theatre’, his early, conscious, active preoccupation with it, [is] the surest indication of his mental endowment.196

Theatre in the Future, in Evreinov’s opinion, will be like a person’s own personal theatre, that any person, young or old, can use for their own needs, and it will thus be the perfect Theatre for Oneself. If Theatricality forms or transforms life as Evreinov said “it awakens in us the will to live, it makes us undergo a thorough self-transformation”197 for a happier existence. “It is exactly in this self-transformation that lies the secret of truly living influence of the theatre, of its curative power”.198 Evreinov logically works on the idea of ‘theatre’s practical use’. Theatre, in his opinion, reveals a person’s true problems and solves them, and he believes those problems cannot be solved by any other method.

Theatre in life has a practical importance for Evreinov:

It’s the magic of Theatre, and nothing else, that gives you a new consciousness, a new scale of feelings, a new interest in life and a new will to live. And in this will to live, as we know, lies the secret of our victory over many bodily ills.199

Golub was naturally attracted to Evreinov’s major theatrical ideas where “theatre flowed into life and life into theatre, with each of us serving both as actor and audience member”.200 This concept of Monodrama, according to Golub, was a step in the development of Evreinov’s philosophy of ‘theatre in life’.

In his Introduction: Harlequinade, Golub emphasises Evreinov’s driving philosophy to express himself through role-playing, in this instance to play Harlequin, the character of

75 the Commedia dell’Arte. Evreinov’s theories synchronised with the social changes brewing at the time, expressed in colourful public debates, lectures, and discussions in search of new theatrical forms. Academics like Carnicke, Golub and Maxsimov have discussed these principles.

Evreinov should receive wider recognition as the forerunner of so called ‘theatrical threads’. He was a futurist whose beliefs were beyond those of his peers. The ‘theatrical threads’ he generated were to be further developed by other theatre practitioners from other countries. Some of these theatre practitioners are Antonin Artaud, the creator of ‘Theatre of Cruelty’, Polish director and creator of ‘Poor Theatre’ Yerzy Grotowski, and the English theatrical icon Peter Brook. One of those notable phenomena in the theatre of the 20th century was Grotowski’s ‘Poor Theatre’ where the professionalism of the actor encompassed the ability to experience the strongest feeling which Grotowski called ‘Total Action’. Growtowski’s ideal actor rejects realism in theatre but instead takes on the spirit of atonement where, in the intensity of the performance, the actor subsumes his ‘self’ and joins with the audience and becomes one. As Grotowski says in his article Statement of Principles,

The main point is that an actor should not try to acquire any kind of recipe or build up a ‘box of tricks’ … The force of gravity in our work pushes an actor towards an interior ripening which expresses itself through a willingness to break through barriers, to search for a ‘summit’, for totality.201

Such an understanding of the theatre correlates with Evreinov’s universal human instinct of Theatricality. For both Grotowski and Evreinov, the actor should reveal the inner impulses which work towards a spiritual liberation.

The same thread can be seen in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, where the audience or viewers relate to the character on an instinctual level which correlates to Evreinov’s ideas of theatre therapy and his proposal to use theatre tools in therapy. Artaud aimed to establish contact between the performer and the audience on the subconscious level. This is similar to Evreinov, who established this in his concept of monodrama. The term Artaud uses is ‘an inner level’ and may be called the key to the relationship between the actor and the spectator in the ‘theatre of cruelty’. Artaud tried to achieve a closer connection between

76 the spectator and the performance and to resituate theatre as an immediate experience for both performers and audience. In his first manifesto he pointed out that a direct communication will be established between the spectator and the spectacle, between the spectator and the actor, from the fact that the spectator, when placed in the middle of the action, is engulfed and physically affected by it:

To reforge the links, the chain of the rhythm when audiences saw their own real lives in a show. We must allow audiences to identify with a show breath by breath and bit by bit.202

The meaning of ‘real theatre’ in both the theories of Evreinov and Artaud are very close, though each man formed his theories independently (Artaud worked in Paris in the 1930s).203

The original man, ‘man as such’, is discovered in the ‘theatre as such’, opening up his true self to theatrical reality. The search for the theatre, which spoke on and to ‘an inner level’ was continued by Jerzy Grotowski and his contemporary theatre is the most notable example. Grotowski wrote:

We are concerned with the spectator who has genuine spiritual needs and who really wishes through confrontation with the performance to analyse himself.204

One can see Evreinov’s influence on Grotowski’s central definition of theatre, which is: what takes place between spectator and actor. In his book Towards a Poor Theatre, Grotowski writes:

One must give one’s self totally, in one’s deepest intimacy, in confidence, as when one gives oneself in love. Here lies the key. Self-presentation, trance, excess, the formal discipline itself… This means that actor must act in a state of trance.205

Thus, in Grotowski’s theatre, the actor’s performance and the audience response are based on spiritual levels. In The Empty Space, Peter Brook wrote about Grotowski’s theatre:

The actor doesn’t hesitate to show himself exactly as he is for he realises the secret of the role demands his opening himself up, disclosing his

77 own secrets. So that the act of performance is an act of sacrifice, of sacrificing what most men prefer to hide. This sacrifice is a gift to the spectator. Here there is a similar relation between actor and audience to the one between priest and worshipper.206

As we can see, Artaud and Grotowski inherited and developed Evreinov’s ideas and their ideas and practices could be further investigated, especially in a contemporary staging of monodrama. Thus, the developments in Western European theatre in the 20th century turned out to be manifestations of Evreinov’s visionary predictions – visionary in terms of theatrical and social concepts.

187 Evreinov, N., Demon Teatral'nosti. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002, 292, translated by Inga Romantsova. 188 Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989, 80. 189 Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation [in English]. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984,37. 190 Evreinov, Nikolai. “In the Commission of Experts” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 266. 191 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Theatre for Oneself” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970,190. 192 Evreinov, Nikolai. “Theatrotherapy” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 123. 193 Shakespeare, William. “As you like it” Act 2, scene 7, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK., 2000 194 Evreinov, Nikolai. “The Theatre for Oneself” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 191. 195 Evreinov, Nikolai. “Theatrotherapy” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 123. 196 Evreinov, Nikolai. “Will to the Theatre” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 38. 197 In Russian Evreinov uses the term transfiguration to define the process of self- transformation 198 Evreinov, Nikolai. “Theatrotherapy” in The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970, 124. 199 Ibid., 123. 200 Golub, 72. 201 Grotowski, Jerzy. “Statement of Principles” in Towards a Poor Theatre. London: Methuen, 1969, 218. 202 Artaud, Antonin. Artaud on Theatre. London: Methuen Drama, 1991, 278. 203 Maksimov, Vadim, ed. Demon Teatral’nosti. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002, 24. 204 Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. London: Methuen, 1969, 40. 205 Ibid., 37. 206 Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972,67.

78 Conclusions

The thesis has attempted to demonstrate the evolution of Evreinov’s definition of Theatricality. In part one Apologia for Theatricality we saw that Evreinov’s thought process about Theatricality centred around symbolism in theatre. In part two New Theatrical Inventions he developed his ideas into theatrical instinct. In part three Theatre in the Future he suggested that Theatricality can influence social behaviour.

What is ‘Theatricality’ for Evreinov? What questions bothered him? We know he searched for the answers in the philosophy of his life and his theatre. Evreinov’s theatrical theories became one of the most profound and uncompromising manifestations of the creative spirit, unfairly forgotten until the end of the 20th century. He is remembered as the theatre creator and director of the Ancient Theatre, as the playwright of Chief Thing and Merry Death, and as réalisateur of The Crooked Mirror Theatre. But this is only a small part of a diverse theatrical heritage; perhaps the most important in his life’s work is the philosophical Theory of Theatre, developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Theatre as Such, the trilogy Theatre for Oneself, the Introduction to Monodrama and many other works formulated and developed a theatrical theory which would become a foundation of other philosophical and theoretical frameworks in many disparate disciplines. Arguably, Evreinov pioneered interdisciplinary performance studies as well as unique theatre styles later developed by Artaud and Grotowski. Evreinov built a whole philosophical system with theatrical principles and concepts where Theatricality becomes the first principle. In his philosophy, Evreinov thought the world existed based on the laws of the theatre, and he felt people were ultimately connected via these universal laws. Evreinov’s ideas of Theatricality in life explain the existence and development of mankind through the implementation of the principles of theatre.

Evreinov has established his position in the mainstream of the theatrical Avant-Garde. The theatrical concept which Evreinov tried to channel was fully developed by great theatre practitioners who followed him. One might say those practitioners developed Evreinov’s ideas at a higher level and modernised them for their contemporary theatre and adjusted them to the needs of the audience. Evreinov aimed to establish the relationship between the audience and the performer on a subconscious level.

79 The Instinct of Transformation, which Evreinov called the Instinct of Theatricality could be literally translated as the instinct of ‘transfiguration’. The word Evreinov used is ‘Preobrazhenie’, which literally translates as ‘transfiguration’. The Russian word also puts a spiritual emphasis on the internal metamorphosis and the inclusivity of every human to transform. Evreinov’s Theatricality is an almost anthropological category as well as an organic part of being a human. Theatricality is equal to the will of play to pretend to be different, it is a will which Nietzsche would call a will to power. ‘I’ in the context of Evreinov’s theories is a construction and constant changing of human masks in an endless roleplay. Evreinov, Artaud and Grotowski related to Theatricality as pre-modal almost mystical traits. Evreinov’s approaches ignited contemporary styles as well as environmental theatre and the mysticism of philosophy of life.207 There is a chance to discover the thinkers from a distant era whose ideas are of relevance to contemporary ideas. They can surprise us with a mysterious mindset which may be ambiguous during their time, but which is an obvious reality in our time. What they were dreaming about back then has materialised in our era, when an open mindset is encouraged and even taught at some educational establishments.

As seen through the three translations brought forward in this project, there are three stages in Evreinov’s work. In the first stage Evreinov looks at Theatricality from a metaphorical point of view. In the second stage, he finds Theatricality in everyday human behaviour. And in the third stage of his philosophy, he uses Theatricality as a tool of improvement: to make the world a better place. For him inner transformation is a changing from the known to the unknown in oneself. According to Evreinov, the wealth of the creation of the fantastic or mystical traits are suppressed by humans in their everyday existence and need to be practiced, as if we need to make the strange familiar.

Evreinov took this metaphor and transformed it into a functioning principle behind life. Theatrical terms created by him have become commonplace vocabulary for anthropologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Modern psychologists also use role-play as a therapeutic tool throughout their psychotherapeutic practices. Contemporary theorist Erving Goffman recaptures several of Evreinov’s theatrical metaphors and tools and uses them to conduct his analysis of society, as previously mentioned. Evreinov anticipated theatre therapy in 1923. Moreno then created the theatre of spontaneity 17 years later in the 1940s. Additionally, the Dutch scholar Johann Huizinga identifies Evreinov’s major points, such as roleplaying-as-an-instinct.208

80 Furthermore, Denis Dutton, in his book The Art Instinct, favourably supports the visionary idea of independent scholar Ellen Dissanayake, who, in her book Homo Aestheticus, argues that art was critical to human adaptation and an important mechanism for the survival of the human species at large. Dissanayake ‘repeats’ after Evreinov:

…that aesthetic ability is innate in every human being, and that art is a need as fundamental to our species as food, warmth or shelter.209

For Evreinov the starting point for his argument was that the theatre is an illusion which depicted reality and at the same time is a more convincing reality. The metaphor of the theatre became in his hands a powerful tool which allows us to see human behaviour as a whole in the light of Theatricality—not in the sense of acting techniques, but as a necessary element of naturalness. In his opinion, even the most natural behaviour has a certain style, it embodies cultural stereotypes, illusion and deception. The role of the theatre in this instance is as a tool for the development of knowledge about social behaviour. Theatre in the narrow sense of the word, real theatre with a stage and a backstage and an auditorium so to speak, is like a flower in full bloom. Therefore, theatre creates a place where the therapeutic quality can begin.

We have two types of Theatricality, so to speak. The first one has a facade of real theatre; the second type is bringing the theatricalisation of life to the front. So, presentation on the stage requires props, the theatricalisation of things in life, the need to embrace props and changes of scenery. Life devoid of theatrical transformation is not living life to the fullest. Is it even possible to believe that life is a kind of truth, that natural behaviour exists? Is there such a thing as naturalness, does it exist, or are we all playing particular roles that we get attached to, changing masks whenever it suits, and do we do it consciously or subconsciously?

Evreinov concludes that Theatricality of life is not in fact a concept of staging life. It is a philosophical concept to explain human nature. It is significant to understand that it is part of our evolution.

This is the path that further research into Evreinov may yet pursue. It is important to channel inner theatrical genius and use it on demand in all different levels of human interaction, in the work place, in the social setting, in intimacy, even in a doctor’s surgery, where a person might be given a placebo and in reaction, willingly hope for a cure. In such

81 a situation, a person takes on the role of the patient hoping to get well – the antidote to atrophy, the seeking of an alternative way to see the future.

As a conclusion, the questions Evreinov asked about Theatricality are like the questions one might ask about life. It is not a concept of theatre. Theatricality and theatricalisation of life is a philosophical concept that describes human nature, the principles of world building, how the universe works, and human evolution. In Evreinov’s time it started as a modernist concept but the beginning of the twenty first century clarified that those theoretical ideas truly became employed in the modern everyday world.

207 Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation [in English]. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984, 56. 208 Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989, 86. 209 Dissanayake, Ellen. Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from and why. University of Washington Press, 2001, 159

82 Bibliography

1. Alghbban, Mohammed. "The Translatability of Metaphor: Study and Investigation." Ph.D., Indiana University, 2011. 2. Arrowsmith, W., and R. Shattuck, eds. The Craft & Context of Translation: A Symposium. Austin: Texas University Press, 1961. 3. Artuad, Antonin. "From the Theatre of Cruelty (First Manifesto) (1932)." In 20th‐ Century Theatre : A Sourcebook, edited by Richard Drain. London: Methuen Drama, 268-73. 4. ———. Artaud on Theatre. London: Methuen Drama, 1991. 5. Babaenko, V G. Harequin and Pierrot: Nikolai Evreinov, Aleksandr Vertinski. Materials to Biographies. Ekaterenburg, Russia: Ural University, 1992. 6. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, c1998. 7. Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology [in English]. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968. 8. Brodie, Geraldine. "Theatre Translation for Performance: Conflict of Interests, Conflict of Cultures." In Words, Images and Performances in Translation, edited by Rita Wilson and Brigid Maher. Continuum Studies in Translation , 63-81. London, : Continuum, 2012. 9. Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972. 10. Brower, R.A., ed. On Translation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. 11. Burns, Elizabeth. Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. 12. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1996. 13. Carnicke, Sharon Marie. The Theatrical Instinct : Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early 20th Century. American University Studies Series Xxvi, Theatre Arts. New York: P. Lang, 1989. 14. Catford, John Cunnison. A Linguistic Theory of Translation; an Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. 15. Collins, Christopher, ed. Life as Theater: Five Modern Plays. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973.

83 16. Davis, Tracy C., and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Theatricality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 17. Dissanayake, Ellen. Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from and why. University of Washington Press, 2001, 159 18. Drain, Richard, ed. 20th‐Century Theatre : A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1995. 19. Durdureanu, Ioana Irma. "Translation of Cultural Terms: Possible or Impossible?". Journal of Linguistic Intercultural Education, no. 4 (2011): 51-63. 20. Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 21. Dzhurova T. S. Theatrical concept of works in N. N. Evreinova. Thesis abstract on competition of a scientific degree of candidate of art. SPb .: SPbGATI 2007. Last modified 2016. http://sovpadenie.com/teksty/evreinov/avtoreferat 22. Elam, Keir. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 1980. 23. Erickson, Jon. "Defining Political Performance with Foucault and Habermas: Strategic and Communicative Action." In Theatricality, edited by T. C. Davis and T. Postlewait, 156-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 24. Evreinov, N. Teatr Kak Takovoi. St. Petersburg: Sovremennoe iskusstvo, 1912. 25. ———. Teatr Dlia Sebia: Teoreticheskaia. St Petersburg: Maski, 1912. 26. ———. Teatr Kak Takovoi. St Petersburg: Sovremennoe Iskusstvo, 1912. 27. ———. Teatr Dlia Sebia: Pragmaticheskaia. St Petersburg: Maski, 1916. 28. ———. Teatr Dlia Sebia: Prakticheskaia. St Petersburg: Maski, 1917. 29. Evreinov, Nikolas. The Theatre in Life. Translated by Alexander I. Nazaroff. New York: B. Blom, 1970. 30. Evreinov, N. "Originality at Someone Else’s Expense." New Theatre Quarterly 8, no. 32 (1992): 325–28. 31. Evreinov, N. ed. Demon Teatral'nosti. Edited by Vadim Maksimov. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002. 32. Evreinov, N. "Philosophiya Teatra Nikolaya Evreinova." In Demon Teatral'nosti, edited by Vadim Maksimov, 5-28. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002. 33. Feral, Josette. "Foreward." SubStance 31, no. 2 (2002): 3-13. 34. Feral, Josette, and Ronald P. Bermingham. "Theatricality: The Specificity of Theatrical Language." [In English]. SubStance 31, no. 2 (2002): 94-108. 35. Fischer-Lichte, E. "Theatricality Introduction: Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies." Theatre Research International 20, no. 2 (1995): 85- 89.

84 36. Fried, Michael. Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 37. Golub, Spencer. Evreinov, the Theatre of Paradox and Transformation [in English]. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984. 38. Gran, Anne-Britt, and Diane Oatley. "The Fall of Theatricality in the Age of Modernity." SubStance 31, no. 2/3 (2002): 251-64. 39. Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. London: Methuen, 1969. 40. Hansen, Gyde, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, and Lasse Schou. Probing the Process in Translation: Methods and Results. Copenhagen Studies in Language. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur, 1999. 41. Harvey, Malcolm. "What’s So Special About Legal Translation?". Meta: Translators' Journal 47, no. 2 (2002): 177-85. 42. Heim, Michael Henry. "Translating Chekhov's Plays: A Collaboration between Translator, Director, and Actors." In Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon, edited by Michael C. Finke and Julie de Sherbinin, 83-88. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2007. 43. Hildebrand, Olle. "Pirandello's Theater and the Influence of Nikolai Evreinov." Italica 60, no. 2 (1983): 107-30. 44. Ischenko, I. Difficulties While Translating Realia. Dnepropetrovsk: Alfred Nobel University, 2012. 45. Jestrovic, Silvija. "Theatricality as Estrangement of Art and Life in the Russian Avant-Garde." Substance 31, no. 2/3 (2002): 42. 46. Klebanov, Michael. "The Culture of Experiment in Russian Theatrical Modernism: The Oberiu Theatre and the Biomechanics of Vsevolod Mejercholʼd." Russian Literature 69, no. 2 (2011): 309-28. 47. Levý, Jiří. "Translation Studies in Translation: “Classicism and Romanticism in European Translation.”." Translation and Interpreting Studies 7, no. 1 (2012): 111- 22. 48. Maksimov, Vadim, ed. Demon Teatral’nosti. Moscow: Letniy Sad, 2002. 49. Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981. 50. Nida, Eugene, and Charles Taber. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Boston: Brill, 2003. 51. Ren, Xiaofei, Qinghua Feng, and Nan Wang. "A Translator on the Target Stage: Ying Ruocheng’s Theatre Translation." Babel 56, no. 4 (2010): 363-76.

85 52. Savić, Vera, and Ilijana Cutura. "Translation as Cultural Transposition." Journal of Linguistic Intercultural Education, no. 4 (2011): 125-49. 53. Savory, Theodore H. The Art of Translation. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. 54. Scott, Joel. "Writing Through: Practising Translation." PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 7, no. 1 (2010): 1-33. 55. Senelick, Laurence, ed. Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists: An Anthology. 1st ed, University of Texas Press Slavic Series, vol. no 5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 56. Shakespeare, William. “As you like it” Act 2, scene 7, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK., 2000 57. Smith, A. "Nikolai Evreinov and Edith Craig as Mediums of Modernist Sensibility." New Theatre Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2010): 203-16. 58. Sobol, Joshua. "Theatricality of Political Theatre." Maske und Kothurn: Internationale Beitrage zur Theaterwissenschaft 33, no. 3-4 (1987): 107-12. 59. Sun, Hongmei. "On Cultural Differences and Translation Methods." Journal of Language Teaching & Research 2, no. 1 (2011): 160-63. 60. Taroff, K. "Screens, Closets, and Echo-Chambers of the Mind: The Struggle to Represent the Inner Life on Stage. Forum Modernes Theater 25, no. 2 (2010): 65-80 61. Timberlake, Alan. A Reference Grammar of Russian: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 62. Tronstad, Ragnhild. "Could the World Become a Stage? Theatricality and Metaphorical Structures." SubStance 31, no. 2 (2002): 216-24. 63. Vislova, A. V. The Silver Age as Theater: The Phenomenon of Theatricality in Culture at the Turn of the 20th Century. Moscow: Rossiiskii Institut Kul`turologi, 2000. 64. Weber, Samuel. Theatricality as Medium. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.

86