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Evreinov and Pirandello: Twin Apostles of Theatricality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Tony Pearson
Tony Pearson
Affiliation:
Lectures in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow
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Extract

Nikolai Nikolaevich Evreinov (1879–1953) has never been accorded his due credit as one of the most original thinkers and practitioners of modern European theatre. The absence of a rigorous and extensive appraisal of Evreinov's vast creative output has undoubtedly blinded otherwise well-informed critics to the seminal importance of his ideas on the essence of theatre. While names like Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Strindberg, Piscator, Brecht, Artaud, Craig, Appia, Reinhardt, Pirandello and even the lesser known Russians, Vakhtangov and Tairov have all become by-words in the history of experimental and innovative theatre, Evreinov has remained a shadowy figure.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 147 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1987

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References

Notes

1. V Shkole Ostroumiya: O teatre ‘Krivoe Zerkalo’ i moei mnogoletnei rabote v nem, kak dramaturga, i glavnogo rezhissera (In the School of Wit: On the ‘Crooked Mirror’ Theatre and my many years of work there as dramatist and chief director), unpublished manuscript compiled by Evreinov between 1950 and his death in 1953Google Scholar. The substance of some five or six chapters of this immense work were published in Russian émigré journals between 1951 and 1963.

2. Deich, A. I., author of among other works Golos Pamyati: Teatral'nye Vpechatleniya i Vstrechi (The Voice of Memory: Theatrical Impressions and Encounters), Moscow, 1966Google Scholar. I acknowledge my profound indebtedness, in all my researches into the Russian theatre, to Deich's widow, Evgeniya Kuzminichna Deich.

3. Golub, Spencer, Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1984.Google Scholar

4. See: Anna, (Kashina) Evreinova, , Evreinov v mirovom teatre xx veka (Evreinov in the world theatre of the 20th Century), Paris, 1964Google Scholar also: ‘Evreinov, L'Apôtre russe de la théâtralité’, special issue of Revue des Etudes Slaves, vol. 53, No. i, Paris 1981Google Scholar, and Nicolas Evreinoff 1879–1953, Exhibition Catalogue, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 1981.Google Scholar

5. Hildebrand, Olle, Harlekin frälsaren: teater och verklighel i Nikolai Evreinovs dramatik (Harlequin Saviour: theatre and life in Nikolai Evreinov's drama), Uppsala doctoral dissertation, 1978Google Scholar and published as Uppsala Slavic Papers, No. 1, 1978; Taschian, Norair None, Nikolaj Evreinov: theorist of the Russian Theatre, University of California PhD, 1974Google Scholar; Golub, Spencer, The Monodrama of Nikolaj Evreinov, University of Kansas PhD, 1978Google Scholar; Carnike, Sharon, The Theatrical Instinct: A Study of the Work of Nikolaj Evreinov in Early Twentieth century Russia, Columbia University PhD, New York, 1979.Google Scholar

6. Bassnett-McGuire, Susan, Luigi Pirandello, London, 1983, pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (My article is an expanded and re-worked version of a paper originally given in May 1984 to the annual conference of the British Pirandello Society at Westfield College, University of London. The conference was principally concerned to adopt a comparative approach investigating the work of Luigi Pirandello in the context of European theatre contemporaries. One such contemporary was Nikolai Evreinov; others considered by the conference were Stanislavsky and Reinhardt.)

7. Collins, Christopher, Life as Theatre: Five Modem Plays by Nikolai Evreinov, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973, p. xxGoogle Scholar: Cannae, Genia, Nicolas Evreinoff en France, Paris, 1978, p. 11Google Scholar; Anna, (Kashina) Evreinova, , op. cit., pp. 23, 28.Google Scholar

8. See Abensour, Gérard, ‘La Comédie du Bonheur’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, op. cit., pp. 120–1.Google Scholar

9. Anna, (Kashina) Evreinova, , op. cit., p. 30Google Scholar. This and subsequent translations from the Russian are my own. See also references to the Pirandello-Evreinov relationship in the exhibition catalogue cited above, pp. 23, 24, 30, 31.

10. Ibid., pp. 49–50; see also Kašina-Evreinova, A., ‘Evreinov tel qu'en lui-même’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar

11. Abensour, Gérard, op. cit., p. 121.Google Scholar

12. See Anna, (Kashina) Evreinova, , op. cit., pp. 76–7, 80Google Scholar; Cannae, Genia, op. cit., pp. 31–5Google Scholar; Abensour, Gérard, op. cit., pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

13. Evreinov, Nikolai, The Theatre in Life. Brentano's New York-London, 1927Google Scholar, reissued Blom, Benjamin, New York, 1970Google Scholar; Il Teatro nella vita, Milan, 1929.Google Scholar

14. Bassnett-McGuire, , op. cit., pp. 135–6.Google Scholar

15. Ibid.

16. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 6.Google Scholar

17. Evreinov, , Dramaticheskie Sochneniya (Dramatic Works), vol. 1, St Petersburg, 1908Google Scholar; vol. 2, St Petersburg, 1914; vol. 3, Leningrad, 1923.

18. Golub, 1984, op. cit., pp. 1–15, 29.Google Scholar

19. Evreinov, , Teatr kak takovoi (The Theatre as Such), Moscow, 1923, p. 103Google Scholar. This collection of articles was originally published in St Petersburg in 1912 and subsequently reissued with two additional sections in Moscow 1923 and again in Berlin 1923. This, and all subsequent page references are to the Moscow edition.

20. Ibid., p. 91.

21. Oliver Sayler in his introduction to Evreinov, 's The Theatre in Life, op. cit., 1970 edition, p. vii.Google Scholar

22. Kazansky, B. V., Metod Teatra: Analiz Sistemy N. N. Evreinova (Theatre Method: an Analysis of the Evreinov System), Leningrad, 1925, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

23. Znosko-Borovsky, Ye. A., Russkii Teatr nachala XX veka (Russian Theatre at the beginning of the 2Oth Century), Prague, 1925, p. 319.Google Scholar

24. Senelick, Laurence (trans, and ed.), Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981, p. liii.Google Scholar

25. The primary sources on the Ancient Theatre are: Stark, Eduard, Starinnyi Teatr, St Petersburg, 1912Google Scholar and Petrograd, 1922; Mgebrov, A. A., Zhizn' v Teatre (2 vols.). Moscow-Leningrad, 1932Google Scholar. The best English language sources are: Moody, C., ‘Nikolai Nikolaevich Evreinov 1879–1953’, Russian Literature Triquarterly, No. 13, (Fall 1975Google Scholar); Moody, C., ‘The Ancient Theatre in St Petersburg and Moscow 1907–8 and 1911–12’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1976, No. 2Google Scholar; Golub, , 1984, op. cit., pp. 107–143.Google Scholar

26. Mgebrov (who was an actor in Kommissarzhevskaya's company), op. cit., provides the best account of this period of Evreinov's career.

27. These years saw the appearance of three collections of polemical articles proposing solutions to the so-called ‘crisis in the theatre’: Teatr: kniga o novom teatre (Theatre: a Book about the New Theatre), St Petersburg, 1908Google Scholar, Krizis Teatra (The Crisis in the Theatre), St Petersburg, 1908Google Scholar, and V sporakh o teatre/(Debating the Theatre), Moscow, 1914Google Scholar. For a discussion of the more significant arguments, see Senelick, , op. cit.Google Scholar

28. ‘Apologia Teatral'nosti’, Utro (Morning), 8 09, 1908Google Scholar and also Svobodnye Mysly (Free Thoughts), 1908Google Scholar. The text was also reproduced in Teatr kak takovoi (The Theatre as Such), op. cit.

29. Teatr kak takovoi, op. cit., p. 19.Google Scholar

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 20.

32. Ibid., pp. 20–1.

33. Bryusov, Valery, ‘Nenuzhnaya Pravda’ (The Unnecessary Truth) in: Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), No. 4, 1902Google Scholar, and also in: Bryusov, , Sobranie Sochinenii (Collected Works), vol. 6, Moscow, 1975.Google Scholar

34. Elam, Keir, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, London, 1980, p. 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 33.Google Scholar

36. Burns, Elizabeth, Theatricality, London, 1972, p. 31.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 41; see also Elam, , op. cit., pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

38. Evreinov, , Teatr kak takovoi, op. cit., p. 18.Google Scholar

39. See note 27.

40. Elam, , op. cit., p. 90.Google Scholar

41. Bassnett-McGuire, , op. cit., p. 69.Google Scholar

42. Hartnoll, Phyllis (ed.), Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 3rd ed., 1967, p. 651.Google Scholar

43. Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Harmondsworth, 1968, pp. 64–6.Google Scholar

44. Senelick, Laurence, op. cit., p. xlixGoogle Scholar. This anthology contains a translation of Sologub whose theory first appeared in Teatr; kniga o novom teatre (Theatre: a Book about the New Theatre), 1908 (see note 27).Google Scholar

45. A full discussion of the ramifications of monodrama as seen by Evreinov falls outwith the scope of the present article and has, in any case, already been the basis of much of Golub's research. Golub, 1984, op. cit.; See also his The Monodrama of Nikolai Evreinov, University of Kansas PhD 1977 and ‘Le Monodrame, structure de base pour l'etude de Nikolai Evreinov’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, op. cit., pp. 15–26.Google Scholar

46. Senelick, , op. cit., pp. 183–99Google Scholar. A partial translation can be found in Sayler, Oliver, The Russian Theatre, Boston, 1920Google Scholar and New York, 1920 in chapter XIV ‘Yevreynoff and Monodrama’, pp. 221–44.Google Scholar

47. Compton, Susan P., The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912–16, London, 1978, pp. 45–54.Google Scholar

48. See Senelick, Laurence, ‘Moscow and Monodrama: The Meaning of the Craig-Stanislavsky Hamlet’, Theatre Research International, Vol. VI, No. 2 (Spring 1981), pp. 109–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also chapter 3 ‘Monodramatics’ of the same critic's Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet: A Reconstruction, Westport, Connecticut, 1982, pp. 28–41.Google Scholar

49. Senelick, , ‘Moscow and Monodrama …’, op. cit., p. 123Google Scholar, referring to Kozintsev, Grigorii, King Lear: the Space of Tragedy. The Diary of a Film Director (trans. Mackintosh, Mary), London, 1976, pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

50. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 55.Google Scholar

51. See Bassnett-McGuire, , op. cit., p. 70.Google Scholar

52. Evreinov, , Teatr dlya ebya (Theatre for Oneself), vol. 1 (‘Theoretical’), Petrograd, 1915Google Scholar; vol. 2 (‘Pragmatical’), Petrograd, 1916; vol. 3 (‘Practical’), Petrograd, 1917.

53. See note 13. This work is divided into parts corresponding to the three volumes of the parent work cited above.

54. For a fascinating discussion of the parallels between Evreinov, ‘Pirandellism’ and the Spanish playwrights Alejandro Casona and Ruiz Iriarte, see: Boring, Phyllis Zatlin, ‘Alejandro Casona and Nikolai Evreinov: Life as Theatre’, Modern Drama, vol. xxii, No. 1 (03 1979), pp. 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. Beckett, Samuel, (Proust and) Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (first pub. 1931 and 1949 respectively), Calder & Boyars, 1976, p. 103.Google Scholar

56. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 8.Google Scholar

57. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 92.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., p. 93.

59. Ibid., p. 116. It is interesting to note the contrast between this view of Dostoyevsky and that of Meyerhold, who thought it justified to speak of ‘the theatre of Dostoyevsky’. See Gladkov, , ‘Meyer-khol'd Govorit’ (Meyerhold Speaks), Novyi Mir, 1961, No. 8.Google Scholar

60. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., p. 120Google Scholar. See also Golub, , 1984, op. cit., pp. 59–61.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., pp. 122–7.

62. See: Golub, , 1984, op. cit., pp. 29–30Google Scholar; Carnicke, Sharon, ‘L'instinct théâtral: Evreinov et la théâtralité’, Revue des Etudes Slaves, op. cit., p. 104Google Scholar; Abensour, , op. cit., p. 118.Google Scholar

63. Evreinov, , The Theatre in Life, op. cit., pp. 128–31.Google Scholar

64. ‘Kazhdaya Minuta – Teatr’, the title of a complete chapter in Teatr dlya sebya, Part 1, pp. 66–86.Google Scholar