TheatrePort

We've moved some shows around, and added a Charles Mee play. Read more about those changes and additions here.

Hi,

I discovered there is a book on Nekrosius called "Nekrosius and the Lithuianian Theatre". It is based on interviews with him and the actors. I cannot believe someone got him to talk. It is in english but written by Lithuianian. I cannot wait to read it! Amazon.com $50.

Bobby

The work of Nekrosius sounds brilliant. Too bad I missed his Uncle Vanya. The next time I visit Europe I'm going to see if he has any productions running at the time. His use of objects, images, metaphors, and the work (or lack thereof) with the actors - it's very fascinating. I love the primitive quality that is associated with his work.

That's great that the Alley hosted/brought in the Nekrosius' staging of Uncle Vanya.

Yelena's perfume bottles sat atop the upright piano at the start of the show. One by one, Vanya, Astrov and Waffles entered, made sure no one was watching and swiped a bottle.

At the end, before her departure, Yelena approached each of the men with a sad smile and very gently took the stolen bottles back. Suddenly she laughed and began to pour the purfumes onto the floor (Again with the pouring of liquids onto the floor!) All this with a breathtaking ecstatic raidiance. And then she left. Knocked me out of my seat.

ah man you should have posted the hamlet thing in the HSF story. :-D , (been meaning to follow the various hamlets around town the past few years)

Does sound interesting though. Damn there are so many versions of hamlet to examine. 8-)

The Vanya sounds interesting too. Sorry to have missed it.

Damn..that Hamlet sounds badass.

Trying to describe a Nekrosius production is a thankless task. How does one prove that ordinary pieces of glass trembling in the actors hands create the impression of dazzling spring sunshine, and the sparkling blue sky, and the happy anticipation of new life after winter hibernation. And the same glass crushed with a huge stone signifies the breakup of ice on the river. How does one convey the mood of a scene where a young boy shivering in the still cold wind tries to strike up a conversation with a girl carrying water in pails? He is anxious to make a good impression on her, and suddenly he snatches a whistle from a chair dangling up there under the ceiling, and fills the stage with triumphant nightingale song. Adults effortlessly change into children here, humans become birds and beasts, and one of the actresses was so convincing as a scarecrow that the audience broke into stormy applause.*

Nekrosius does not really mean it: He is not worried about language problems. He paints almost Brueghel-like peasants who have finally seen spring arrive and are now rejoicing and making merry, somewhat crudely and clumsily, ready to start on their eternal peasant chores - sowing, weeding, building. The scene with a builder laying a brick wall lasts for ages, although it has been exquisitely conceived - the builder flies to and fro on a huge swing as he snatches bricks from his assistants hands and carefully lays them one by one - in flight, all but crashing against the ground. The important thing for the director is to show not only the hazardous beauty of work but also how hard it is, and how monotonous, how interminable - all that constitutes the essence of peasant life. And what difference does it make whether the peasants hail from Prussia, Zemaitija (the native parts of the director himself) or elsewhere, if you can see for yourself how this monotonous backbreaking work that follows the change of the seasons, produces lovely, lyrical, poignant images. This lyricism is like Ariadnes clew in the endless labyrinths of Nekrosius metaphors; without it they would be dead and tedious.*

In all fairness, it must be said that Seasons at times disintegrates into fragments that, though brilliant, exist by themselves. The directors stage language and his actors plastic mastery have reached such perfection that they can easily do without speech - a tendency as typical of todays theater as it is dangerous. Because Nekrosius is the one and only, while there are any number of those who pointedly make free with the text of even the famous plays.*

Eimuntas Nekrosius (1952-) - the stage director; in 1978, he has graduated the Lunachiarsky Institute of Theater Art, he specialised on stage-managing. After returning to Lithuania, he worked at Vilnius State Youth Theater; during 1979-1980, he resettled to Kaunas and staged "The Ballads of Duokiskis" by Saulius Saltenis and "Ivanov" by Anton Chechov in Kaunas Drama Theater. In 1980, he became the stage director of the Youth Theater and worked here till 1991. Together with his classmates he had staged six performances, which were the best stagecraft of the Youth Theater in the ninth decade. The theater and the stage director were recognised to be the most interesting not only in the Soviet Union but lately in the Baltic States and West Europe as well. In 1991, Eimuntas Nekrosius has left the theater and became the stage director of the International Theater Festival in Lithuania - LIFE. The stagecraft produced by the stage director were performed in a lot of foreign countries and theatre festivals. In 1998, Nekrosius has established the independent art centre "The Fort of Art".


The performances staged by Eimuntas Nekrosius has popularised the new trend in Lithuanian theater - the poetic-metaphorical theater, where the main attention is devoted to the psychologically exact, emotional and plastic acting, the special and unique usage of the scene properties which gets a multi-layer meaning in the play .Chechov's "The Uncle Vania" staged by Nekrosius in 1986 had an especial resonance; the stage director refuted existing tradition of the Chechov's play staging which was based on Stanislavsky. This stage director and stage-poet is a supporter of the theatrical and independent theater, he uses the literature work as an impulse to create the scene story; his especially playful, dynamic and full of visual decisions performances absolutely destroyed the conception of literal theater and became the example to young stage directors while organising the scene space for acting.

In 1994, Nekrosius was announced the best stage director of the year by Lithuanian critique for his stagecraft of "Mozart and Saljery. Don Chuan. Black Death." ; in the same year, the stage director was awarded for The New Reality in Europe Theater by the Europe Theater Union and the Taormina Art Committee; in 1996, he was awarded by the UBU Premium (Italy). In 1998, he became the winner of Lithuanian National Premium for his stagecraft of 1994-1997. His stagecraft of "Hamlet" was awarded as the best performance of 1997/1998 season by Lithuanian critique and Eimuntas Nekrosius was announced the best stage director of the year and awarded by "Kristoforas". Since 1994, the stage director frequently toured Europe, performed his plays at the international theater festivals in Europe and America.

The last performance by E. Nekroshius "Othelo", produced by "Venetian biennale" . Unofficial premier was held in Vilnius in December 2000. Othelo - Vladas Bagdonas, Desdemona - known Lithuanian primaballerina Egle Spokaite .

ok. having hamlet stop the dripping water when he dies is brilliant.

Hi,

You think the HSF is doing something like this? :-) See below...

Bobby


Reality Theater: A 'Hamlet' Staged in Elsinore



By RON JENKINS



ELSINORE, Denmark -- ALTHOUGH it is unlikely that either Hamlet or

Shakespeare ever set foot in Elsinore, this coastal Danish town is

shrouded in legends that make visitors feel as if they are treading

on sacred literary ground. After walking down Ophelia Way and

sleeping at the Hamlet Hotel, theatergoers at the Hamlet Sommer

Festival's annual productions of Shakespeare's tragedy in the

courtyard of Elsinore's seaside castle can nurture the illusion of

communing with the play's characters on their home territory.



Earlier this month, the Lithuanian theater director Eimuntas

Nekrosius's powerfully eccentric vision of the work lured audiences

into a palpable sensory connection to the play that was

particularly suitable to the cold, wet summer nights of Denmark.



Living up to his reputation for startling stage pictures of raw

emotional intensity, Mr. Nekrosius framed the tragedy in images of

ice. Hamlet vowed revenge on a stage littered with shards of ice as

sharp as the dagger in his hand. A deluge of freezing rain fell on

the characters, evoking the ghost of Hamlet's father as if he were

seeping into their bones like a damp chill.



Huddled under blankets to shield themselves from the brisk sea

winds, spectators could easily empathize with Hamlet as he shivered

before them. The actors spoke in Lithuanian with Shakespeare's

English text projected in supertitles above them. But even without

the benefit of translation, the bleak essence of the production

wafted from the stage like an Arctic mist.



" 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart," says one of the

castle guards in the play's opening lines, suggesting a link

between temperature and emotion that Mr. Nekrosius exploited

repeatedly, most notably in a scene in which the ghost of Hamlet's

father handed the prince a huge block of ice to hold while

listening to the phantom ask for vengeance.



Hamlet's pain was palpable as the meaning of his father's words

was etched into his skin as well as his memory. The hero's

subsequent inability to act emerged as a problem of freezing up, a

numbing of his senses. Ice appeared in various other forms

throughout the production, and the water that dripped from these

thawing shapes became a metaphor for action evolving out of

immobility that coincided with the slow heating up of the

characters' frozen feelings.



Fashioning visual metaphors out of primal materials is a trademark

of Mr. Nekrosius, 49, who has been a leading director in the Baltic

region since his much-acclaimed productions of Gogol's "Nose" and

Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" for the State Theater of Lithuania in the

early 90's. (The "Uncle Vanya" was seen at the Joyce Theater in New

York in 1991.) His reputation has been spreading to the rest of the

world in the wake of a successful trilogy of Shakespeare stagings

("Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "Othello"); they have been seen in Italy,

Portugal, Korea, Russia, France and Poland over the last few years

and are scheduled to travel to Brazil, Argentina and Italy this

fall.



" `Hamlet' is the play that made Nekrosius's name in Europe," said

Eugenio Barba, the Italian director of the Odin Teatret in Denmark,

who attended the opening night in Elsinore. "It has the mark of a

theater artist who understands the dramaturgy of actions as clearly

as he understands the dramaturgy of words."



Mr. Nekrosius highlighted the iciness of the characters'

relationships by placing "Hamlet" in a setting dominated by cold

steel. The rusted blade of a jagged-toothed rotary saw hung over

the stage like a burned-out sun radiating the gloom of extinguished

power. Rolling metal printers' tables were transformed into graves,

castle walls and austere palace furnishings.



During the play within the play that is intended "to catch the

conscience of the king," an old iron paper press with huge cranks

and wheels was dragged to center stage. When Claudius, the king,

sat inside, it took on the appearance of a human mousetrap forged

from a medieval torture device.



"All the props were discarded objects that we found and put to our

own uses," Mr. Nekrosius said during a rehearsal break on a grassy

hill above the castle moat. Speaking in Lithuanian through an

interpreter, Mr. Nekrosius made it clear that he does not enjoy

talking about his work. But his severe expression changed when the

topic turned to the props, as if he were talking about old friends.



"They are good machines," he said with a smile. "You could not

devise anything like them. They are crude and rough, like the

atmosphere Shakespeare creates between the lines of his play. The

printing tables, paper press and round saw might have been used to

cut down trees and make books, so you could even say they have a

relationship to literature."



Time frames collapse in Mr. Nekrosius's stage world of metal

remnants, just as they do in Shakespeare's text, which patches

together its plot from found fragments of Danish legend, history

and myth. Although the machine parts onstage came from different

eras of the 20th century, their use and placement created the

disconcerting illusion that they were salvaged from an ancient

junkyard of pagan icons.



In the context of the ice, fire and fur that surrounded them, the

metal objects functioned as elemental tools for survival in a

savage landscape that recalled the Viking origins of Shakespeare's

borrowed hero. The character of Prince Amleth was first documented

in the semi-historical Danish chronicles written at the beginning

of the 13th century by Saxo Grammaticus. Recounting the basic plot

elements that Shakespeare encountered in later Elizabethan

translations of the story, Saxo employed a vague chronology that

placed Amleth in the sixth or seventh century.



The inventive use of fire, ice, water and iron is characteristic

of Mr. Nekrosius's directing style, particularly in his recent

Shakespeare productions. Lithuania, where the director lives and

creates his new works with his company, Meno Fortas (Fortress of

Art), is a country with a rich history of pagan kings and

traditions.



"All these things come naturally to me," Mr. Nekrosius said,

referring to his manipulation of the raw elements onstage. "I don't

think about the pagan culture in a conscious way, but I spend a lot

of time in the Lithuanian countryside, coming into constant contact

with fire, water and the earth, so it is natural for me to put

these things into a performance. This kind of environment is closer

to me than settings that are cultivated and refined. I like crude

textures."



In Mr. Nekrosius's vision of "Hamlet," the passions of the

characters are as elemental as the set. Polonius hurls Hamlet's

shoes across the stage in a rage when he suspects that his

daughter, Ophelia, has been violated by Hamlet. Hamlet writhes on

the ground in a fetal position when he begs his mother not to

return to the bed of his father's murderer. The Players taunt

Hamlet by shrieking like beasts.



Hamlet's soliloquies generate a level of anguish that makes his

consideration of suicide much more than a philosophical hypothesis.

The "to be or not to be" monologue was performed under a chandelier

made of ice crystals and flaming candles that dripped hot wax and

cold water on Hamlet as he spoke. The chandelier hung from a hook

under the rusty buzz-saw blade, making the scene even more ominous.

Under these conditions, when the prince ripped his shirt into

tatters with excruciating intensity, it made self-slaughter seem

like a soothing alternative.

"That blade hanging over my head is heavy enough to cut off my arm

if it falls," said Andrius Mamontovas, who played the title role.

"Every night before the show, I ask the stagehands if it is tied

tightly. As I speak I can feel the weight of that blade hanging

over my head. It scares me and I think Nekrosius wants me to be

scared."



Mr. Mamontovas, 34, is a Lithuanian rock star who was chosen by

Mr. Nekrosius for the role because of his stage presence and his

lack of formal acting training. The director's preferences in

acting style is similar to his preferences in stage textures: rough

and unrefined.



"Nekrosius doesn't say much to actors during rehearsals," Mr.

Mamontovas said. "All I remember him telling me is, `Melt the ice.'

I learned from him how to do things in a very simple way. There are

fire, ice and metal on the stage, and by simply using those

elements we capture something truly Lithuanian from the pagan

times. Lithuania is a land of magicians and primitive means. There

will always be others with more technically sophisticated theater

productions, so for us the magic has to come from simplicity."



The actress who played Ophelia, Viktorija Kuodyte, has a similar

respect for Mr. Nekrosius's style, and after working with him for

eight years, she said, she learned to cope with his tight-lipped

approach to directing by watching his body language.



"He hardly ever speaks," she said. "But sometimes the little

movements in his hands and his eyes can explain a whole scene. When

he does use words it takes a while to figure out what they really

mean. For instance, he told me at the beginning of rehearsals that

Ophelia should stink of fish. So I put an old fish in my clothes

during rehearsals and the smell was disgusting, but eventually I

understood that it wasn't the smell that was important. He wanted

her to smell bad as an act of defiance, in protest of everything

that was going on around her."



Like Mr. Mamontovas, Ms. Kuodyte is a trained musician, and Mr.

Nekrosius used her ethereal singing voice to convey the innocence

that is destroyed by the power struggles in the castle. The

emotionally evocative use of music and sound effects is another

Nekrosius trademark.



THE recorded soundtrack for his "Hamlet" production includes

everything from Verdi and Brahms to contemporary rock. But the most

poignant use of music came from the sounds his actors elicited from

objects onstage. The repressed fury of Claudius was expressed in

the explosive force with which he smashed coconuts against the

metal-topped printing tables. During the duel between Hamlet and

Laertes, the futility of violence was captured in the hollow swish

of metal rapiers slashing against the wind. At the beginning of the

play, the steady thud of water-drops falling on the skin of a drum

suggested the presence of the ghost, as if the heartbeat of

Hamlet's dead father could still be heard. And in the end, Hamlet

found death by simply placing his hand between the falling water

and the drum, ending the pulse with the aural and visual equivalent

of Shakespeare's phrase, "the rest is silence."

atomized,
I dont know if i really do specifically remember that bottle dripping during that scene or if over the years i have embellished that moment in my head, but that was great! as soon as i read that just now i was like oh yeah! its funny how you can get excited over something as simple and theatrical as that - seems like it would be so easy to do. Like Bobby says though, those guys could take those big ideas and make them real, make them come alive, with specific behavior and small poetic gestures.

Hi Atomized,

>>>>As I was young and unschooled at the time I saw it, I was completely unaware of the political dimension.<<<<

Even as a young adult and schooled it took a Russian scholar of Meyerhold to point out all the levels to me at the time. I was fascinated but confused initially by what I saw.

>>>Found out years later when I dug up some articles on the production. It was also the first time I had seen any Chekov play onstage, so that's colored my relationship with his work ever since.<<<<

Great place to start. Strasberg's Three Sisters was my initiation and it has colored my POV ever since.

>>>>>Some of those moments left indelible marks on me. How about Yelena's perfume bottles? Or Astrov's maps of the forest? Or the tipped-over vodka bottle slowly pouring onto the floor as Sonya and Astrov enact their unrequited love scene.<<<<

Yes, I had forgotten. Weren't the maps either giant or tiny? That vodka bottle pefection both as character image -- Astrov the bigtime alcoholic and the USSR dying in a vodka soaked populace. Perfect image. I remember the perfume but refresh me -- on a tray? At the piano? I also loved the bear skinned -- Russia again -- rug when Astrov did his incredible dance wearing it as a moment of conquest in love and freedom. There must always be music and dancing and drinking throughout Chekhov and it must erupt when you least expect it -- so Russian.

>>>>I attempted (on a much less agressive scale) to incorporate that kind of poetic metaphor when I directed Cherry Orchard.<<<<

Interesting. Did you study Pinitille's 1980's Orchard at the Arena or Serban's 1970's one at Lincoln Center? -- Both were in the Nekrosius vein. I wonder if his is still in the repertory in Lithuiania.

>>>>Wish I'd had an opportunity to meet the cast and the reclusive Nekrosius.<<<<<

They were fun. The actor playing the professor was very shy but inwardly powerful. Astrov was a clown. We all had lunch one day and then spent a couple of nights drinking. I have to dig up all my material on that production as they gave away a pretty big newspaper type program on their theatre and its production. I hope I still have it. I must.

Bobby

Hi,

What is interesting to me is Nekrosius' basic POV toward Vanya -- if not its specific content -- could be transposed to an American Vanya.

Nekrosius saw Vanya as a Lithuianian would -- a play about a foreign people and culture as occupiers of his home -- Lithuiania. The Professor was the old USSR. He was the Communist Party as bureaucrat. He was "leaning" on the edge of collapse -- morally, socially, politically, militarily, etc.... He is the center of the play and the center of Nekrosius' soc/pol/rel POV toward the play as embodied on stage in acting and staging. Having Vanya treated with hot air glasses at the start created the sense of backward, medieval old Russia controling the lives and minds of these people. The religious symbols and actions -- the Sonya confession in the confessional -- were all old Russia -- that Russia Chekhov hated as a doctor and artist. Nekrosius created that world on top of his Lithuiania. It was a brilliant "aesopian" tool.

His added characters of the sweeping, playing obviously Lithuianian servants between scenes was perfect. Here was the spirit of Lithuiania on stage -- free, playful, smart, modern, fast, improvisational and fun. The audience loved them and endured the slow, morose, tail-chasing, trapped, painful Russians.

The same POV could be America today. The Russians become the Republicans, fundamentalist Christians, Victorians and Conservatives who have conquered America and servants are added who represent artists, women, gays, minorities and non-supply-side capitalists. The old people in the play are all religious zealots. Vanya is trapped in this new/old America. Astrov the environmentalist is co-opted by it. Yelena and Sonya are what it does to women. IBP itself is perfect for the servant POV! The professor would have to be ramrod stiff and brittle to create a absolutism waiting to explode.

Of course, the American avante-garde always simplistically and physically uses the play and acting to indicate such ideas in gross and obvious ways. Nekrosius still had the actors act the life of the play as individual characters and real experience. The Russians use the design elements of theatre; the physical body and voice of the actor and the specific INNER choices of the actor to fully create and not just physically indicate their production concepts. Americans settle for postmodern intellectualism and static or performance art visual poetry while allowing the direction and director to rob theatre and acting of their essential nature -- experiential action, reality through the imagination, true thought, feeling and doing. It is one thing to grossly paste idea onto matter and another altogether to be able to imagine specific meaning within re-creating living itself. Russians take truth in acting for granted as the nature of the beast. We foolishly think it is a matter of opinion or choice.

Bobby

As I was young and unschooled at the time I saw it, I was completely unaware of the political dimension. Found out years later when I dug up some articles on the production. It was also the first time I had seen any Chekov play onstage, so that's colored my relationship with his work ever since.

Some of those moments left indelible marks on me. How about Yelena's perfume bottles? Or Astrov's maps of the forest? Or the tipped-over vodka bottle slowly pouring onto the floor as Sonya and Astrov enact their unrequited love scene.

I attempted (on a much less agressive scale) to incorporate that kind of poetic metaphor when I directed Cherry Orchard.

Wish I'd had an opportunity to meet the cast and the reclusive Nekrosius.

yeah, that production was great, very surprising, very alive. That "lean" of the professors was incredible. I kept thinking "i cant believe he is really doing that!" And of course i remember the peasants, like the zanies, coming out to dance, clean and change the set to music. They moved and "lived" in a completely different rythm and key. And that "weird" scene you mentioned with the bulbs covering the candles placed on his back which would create a suction and then stretch out his skin as they lifted them off. Nothing seemed stagey or obvious. Everything just seemed to unfold and move to its own unique way. It wasn't like watching a well rehearsed recitation and physical representation of a script like most productions are. It really had a full "life." Man, what a great play to work on!

Hi Atomized,

Yes, Gilman is a smart man and good at what he does. I have a decided bias against him as he along with Brustein, Rogoff, Schechner, Hoffman, Gray, etc were all part of a group of young academics who set their sights on destroying the Stanisalvsky heritage in America.

The Nekrosius production was incredible. I saw it several times in Chicago before it came here. (David, didn't you see it too?) I had the chance to meet with several of the actors and the artistic director of the theatre. Nekrosius is kind of a recluse so it was not possible to get to him. Their work was based on training in "Active Analysis" the improvisation based rehearsal approach developd by Stanislavsky and taught by Maria Knebel. Knebel was also Michael Chekhov's student in the teens in Russia and she incorporated Chekhov's imaginative approaches to physical characterization into her work. The actor playing the Professor once explained that his fantastically odd, slanted walk and stance was based on internalizing the Leaning Tower of Pisa as the Psychological Gesture of his character. The actor playing Astrov was an instinctually emotional actor and was fascinating to watch when real moments of inner inspiration would hit him on stage. His performance varied every night as it was always alive. Of course, Nekrosius had staged a criticism of the USSR as the occupier of Lithuiania and he used the added servents in the added scenes of cleaning to make this point. Chicago had a huge Lithuianian population and it was amazing to listen to their responses to the choices. I always loved the opening of the hot glasses treatment on Vanya's back -- perfection. The old religious atmosphere and actions were so right. I don't know if I felt this was really Chekhov's Uncle Vanya but it was obviously a deeply personal, imaginative and significant work of art and a blistering demonstration of what a director and a real company can do when they work to actually create the life of a production and not just stage a show using a concept.

Bobby

I found Gilman to be academic as well, but found many incredibly useful poetic ideas, observations and phrases within this scholarly tome. Ironically, since this thread was spawned by the upcoming Houston production of "Uncle Vanya," the chapter on that play was the least groundbreaking for me. But then, I had also seen (at a very impressionable age) the Nekrosius production of "Vanya" that stopped at the Alley in the late 80s. That production remains, for me, the final word on "Uncle Vanya."

His insights on "Cherry Orchard," however, illuminated the IBP production before and after the fact.

The boyfriend is waiting to go out for the night, so more on Chekov later.

I second (or third?) Adlers book. When I was on hiatus, THAT book fanned my flames.

Theatre and Boxing? I've been listening to a lot of jazz and studying it's relationship and similarities with theater and in so doing I have watched almost every Miles Davis dvd known to man. Miles was a huge boxing fan especially Jack Johnson of course, and often equated jazz (life) to boxing. His pieces are one big boxing match.

Interesting.

Hi David,

How did I forget Stella Adler's great Ibsen, Chekhov and Strinburg book -- incredible stuff in there. Stella's one on American playwrights is almost finished being edited and covers Williams, Miller, Odets, etc.... Her take on Streetcar is suppose to be fascinating.

No fan of Gilman here -- way too academic and cold for my blood. There is a recent study of Chekhov's plays by a Russian. His name and the name of his book escape me but at the time (1999?) it sounded like very good stuff. It is in translation. Anyone doing Chekhov should look at the major history/art book published by Harvard or Cambridge Press about 10 years ago called something like LIFE ON THE RUSSIAN COUNTRY ESTATE. It was a detailed study of the life of the gentry in Russia with ample photos of homes, grounds, clothes, housewares, servants, games, etc.... It is a must for a real sense of the behavior and style of the period even if one decides to ignore the period. Always good to know what one is choosing to avoid.

David, I agree, Barba's Anthropology book is stunning. I had a correspondence with him 10 years ago about the influence of the First Studio as Barba is big on the tradition of laboratory theatres. He gets it right! The 2 Stanislavsky essays in the book are brilliant and I corresponded a good deal with their author Ruffini. His book THEATRE AND BOXING is being translated from the Italian. He is good. The new book on Barba put out in the new Routledge series is excellent. Pitches, who did the great new Meyerhold book has a book coming out all about Michael Chekhov, Vasiliev, Knebel, the First Studio etc as it is a study of the role of the laboratory theatre in Russia. It is called "Science and Stanislavsky and the Affect on Acting". He is brilliant.

Bobby

I love that show.

No plug for Stella?

Richard Gilman's Chekov's Plays was also a pretty good read. Many of us read it while working on IBP's Cherry Orchard.

Hi,

Let me get the names of the books right as I was typing from memory.

THE CHEKHOV THEATRE: A century of the plays in performance
by Laurence Senelick --- exhausive study

PERFORMING CHEKHOV by David Allen

THE ACTORS CHEKHOV by Jean Hackett. Covering Nikos Psacharopoulos 30 years of doing Chekhov at Williamstown Theatre Festival -- covering class and rehearsal transcripts and lengthy interviews with the actors like Chris Walken, Lee Grant, Blythe Danner.

TOWARD MASTERY: An Acting Class With Nikos Psacharopoulos
edited by Jean Hackett. Several sections covering work on Chekhov, particularly Vanya.

ANTON CHEKHOV by Donald Rayfield. Best biography by far.

UNDERSTANDING CHEKHOV by Donald Rayfield. Best formal study of the plays as dramatic literature -- excellent.

PROJECTIONS 4: Film-makers on Film-making edited by John Boorman, etc. Great interview with director and actors of "Vanya on 42nd Street".

CHEKHOV Four Plays translated by Carol Rocamora. Great new translations for actors with tons of notes on the obscure references in the plays and on pronouncing those names! A must read.


Bobby

Hi,

Mamet translated Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard off other people's literal Russian to English translations. They're not my favs by a longshot but certainly not bad. With Chekhov it is good to look at several versions and note the differences. David Magarshack's are interesting. Van Italie's are good. Smith and Krause recently published a collection by a native Russian translator which seemed good. Mamet's have an added style which is his own. The British versions always have language usage issues for Americans.

I saw "Vanya on 42nd Street" when it was just Uncle Vanya being done as an experimental rehearsal production at the Victory Theatre on 42nd Street and then as the film. It has extraordinary moments and bad moments. On stage it was a great night of theatre -- 30 people were allowed in as the audience, a bare stage and acting. Perfection. Dodin talks about it in his book and there is a long interview on it in a book on film called Projections 4 (I believe).

There are other film versions of Vanya. Strasberg's production of Three Sisters is on tape and is an excellent opening into Chekhov's special world.

Laurence Senelick's book 20th Century Chekhov Performance (or something like that) covers all the great Chekhov productions the world over and the approach each production took to the play -- a fascinating read. Look at the material on Nekrosius' experimental Lithuianian production of Vanya from the 80's that even played the Alley by some miracle -- startling conception and deeply imaginative. The acting was physically imaginative and deeply real psychologically and emotionally.

Playing Chekhov by David Allen is great. Acting Chekhov based on Nikos Papidochorus (spelling?) classes and legendary work at Williamstown Theatre Festival on Chekhov is brilliant.

Bobby

i ordered uncle vanya (mamet version) off of amazon...

Uncle Vanya

I'm very excited about this production, and alot scared.
Sofya.
Yeah a little frightened.

Awesome. Thanks!

I could be mistaken, but I believe the "..on 42nd Street" part was Andre Gregory and his posse'...once they get into Vanya proper (rather ingeniously) it is Mamet.

I did a quick search for the script and couldn't find it..too busy today, but I know IBP actors are ordering it from somewhere..I'll find out and post.

Ah, I do believe I was "out of the country", But I do recall now hearing of this flick. Thanks.
Here

Of course they had a few writing credits there. Is the play any different?

"Plot Summary for
Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
An uniterrupted rehersal of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" played out by a company of actors. The setting is their run down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten."

ah yes...of course..
8-)

Rent "Vanya on 42nd Street"..that's Mamet's version. It is published..I think you can get it on Amazon but have not looked.

jeff? dude. fill me (us)in.
Has anyone read this Mamet version?

Yes, I've been intrigued by the Mamet adaptation of Uncle Vanya as well. Nice choice IBP. I need to get a copy of this and read it...

All of the projects sound great. I can't wait to see them.

So I was perusing the headlines section of this site and read more details on the season:

Quote:

The interest grows. A mamet version? I had no idea he reworked this puppy. Is it a complete adaptation or a translation or...? hmmm Interesting.
(*:

Uncle vanya?
IBP? oh yes.
inject some adrenaline into that 'perceived' corpse.

Quite a few grant projects. Congrats on the push to original work as well. sounds good.