Experiment/3Kcnepmrem, 1 (1995), 291-96.

AlLISON COMINS-RICHMOND

NIKOLAI EVREINOV AND BORIS ARONSON

The playwright and director Nikolai Nikolaevich Evreinov (1879- 1953) was a leading figure of the Russian bohemia in the 1910s (Fig. 102).1 Close to painters and poets such as Sergei Sudeikin and Mikhail Kuzmin, Evreinov achieved his early theatrical success as an organizer and dramatist for the St. Petersburg cabarets, especially The Crooked Mirror (active 1908-18). In spite of, or rather because of, his multifarious literary and visual experiments, Evreinov's work can be characterized as "theatri• cal"-as the result of a conscious endeavor to involve and integrate the formal devices that underscore the fact that a play is indeed a play and not a part of life. At the same time, Evreinov believed firmly that "theatri• cality" should be as much a part of everyday life as of the theater itself. Reacting sharply against the conventions of Realist theater as summarized by the Moscow Art Theater, Evreinov paid close attention to the elements and characters of the Commedia deii'Arte, espedally to the manipulation of music, pantomime, and acrobatics. Not surprisingly, therefore, Evreinov favored theatrical miniatures rather than long dramatic spectacles and often staged short comic plays at The Crooked Mirror, something that developed into his concept of the "monodrama". According to one observer, Evreinov's monodrama de• pended upon "the world seeing the world as the hero does, each member of the audience becomes the hero, and thus becomes the main actor of the play.... [Moreover} everything on stage must assist with the audience's process of identification. Therefore, he asks that the presentation of the play be limited to one viewpoint. The audience must literally see what the protagonist sees and exactly how he sees it. "2 Perhaps the most intriguing example of this innovative form was Evreinov's intimate play called V kulisakh dushi [In the Sidescenes of the Soul] (1908) where the audience, placed inside the protagonist's body, experienced his emotions directly by viewing and hearing the beating of the gigantic heart and the vibration of the searing nerves. But Evreinov could think in terms of vast spatial

1 . For information on Evreinov, see S. Golub, Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1984); S. Carnicke, The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early Twentieth Century (New York: lang, 1989. 2. Carnicke, Theatrical Instinct, p. 73. ,, 292 Experimentj3KcnepHMeFIT dimensions, too. In 1920, for example, he staged what proved to be his largest and most ambitious production, i.e., The Storming of the Winter Palace. 3 With a cast of thousands, this monumental work reenacted the crucial event:that signalled the onslaught of the October Revolution. Evreinov is best remembered as a playwright for four plays in particu• lar, i.e., the trilogy Samoe glavnoe [The Main Thing; sometimes translated as The Chief Thing. 1921] (Fig .. 103 ), Korabl. pravednykh [The Ship of the Righteous, 1925; sometimes transiC\ted as The Ship of Saint~ and The Nave of the Righteous], and Teatr vechnoi voiny [The Theater of Eternal War; sometimes translated as The Unasked Ball, 192fJ), and Veselaia smert (A Merry Death, 1908]. But Evreinov is also remembered for his astute works on the history and theory of theater, especially his idiosyncratic philosophy of theater promulgated in Teatr kak takovoi [The Theater as Such, 1913), the three-volume Teatr dlia sebia (Theater for Itself, 1915- 17], and Teatr u zhivotnykh [The Theater and Animals, 1924]. After emigra-ting in 1925, Evreinov settled in Paris and continued to stage his plays and publish his essays in the United States and Europe. The designer and illustrator Boris Solomonovich Aronson (1900-80) studied at the Kiev Art Institute before taking lessons from Alexandra Exter also ifl Kiev-whose radical Cubist style left an indelible imprint on his work. 4 In 1921 Aronson moved to Moscow where he worked on sets and costumes for productions at the Yiddish Chamber Theater. After a short residence in Berlin, Aronson settled in the United States in 1923 and soon achieved renown as a stage designer. In 1926 he chaperoned Evreinov and his wife in New York and illustrated the English-language edition of The Theatre in Life (Fig. 104). In 1926-27 he had two one-man shows in New York City, and was active as a stage designer for many enterprises until the end of his life, including the Metropolitan Opera, his last commission being a production of the Nutcracker in 1977.

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3. The Storming of the Winter Palace premiered on November 7, 1920, and involved 8000 actors, 500 musicians, and 150,000 spectators. For further information on this production, see N •. Evreinov, "Vziatie Zimnego dvortsa,' Krasnyi militsioner (Moscow), No. 14, Noy. 15, 1920, pp. 4-5; and Golub, Evreinov, pp.. 191-208. 4. For information on Aronson, see F. Rich and l. Aronson, [he, Theatre Art of Boris Aronson (New York: Knopf, 1987).