p There is no such thing as “routine” in
art, the same old thing, day in day out. Art is always a process, exploration, movement. And it is a never-ending process. If you have stopped, you have fallen behind. It is this uninterrupted movement, the eager search for the new and the constant sense of dissatisfaction with what has so far been achieved that ensures the freshness and viability of art, and indeed its being necessary at all.

p A new production means new objectives, new problems and new explorations. There are no constants in art, no eternal truths. But there are eternal values and absolute concepts. There are no permanent criteria, but there are permanent requirements.

p And the first of these requirements is civic responsibility.

p What does it mean, being a worthy citizen of one’s country and time?. It means above all being vividly aware of what society lives by, what really interests contemporary audiences, what questions people are seeking an answer to when they come to the theatre today.

p The question of a work’s ideological and social content is not just one problem among many for the artist. It is the problem, the foundation from which a work of art proceeds or fails to proceed as the case may be. One can have superb technique and even genuine talent with- 45 out being an Artist, for unless one feels with the precision of the most accurate of barometers the climate of life, of one’s time, all one creates -will at best be but a clever display of tricks of one’s mind and imagination.

p The artist must live as a good member of his society, with a strong sense of civic responsibility. No amount of professional skill or even talent can compensate for failure to do so. Indeed, the ability to feel the pulse of life, sense what interests and concerns people, what they accept and what they reject, is an essential ingredient of true talent. There is no harm in making mistakes during rehearsals, but one must not forget for an instant the problems and ideas occupying the minds of one’s fellow citizens. For if we do, we gradually, imperceptibly, become mere timeservers, incapable of creating anything authentic, necessary or useful to society.

p When I know exactly why a particular play is being put on today, when I am quite clear in my mind as to its message and it is something that I personally consider to be of social importance at the time, then I can go ahead and pursue definite ideological and artistic objectives in the scenic embodiment of the work, so that the production hits the desired target.

p The second basic requirement is that ideas must be experienced emotionally, that they infect the artist. Tolstoi wrote because he just had to write. One has to be “obsessed” with ideas like Tolstoi to create a truly moving work of art. If we have a cold, purely intellectual approach to ideas, how can we possibly hope to move people?

p The director must not be cold or impartial. He must not be indifferent to beauty and ugliness. All his abilities, knowledge and experience must serve a single goal-that of affirming what is new and beautiful in our lives. He must mobilise his art against all that is base and philistine, hostile to the ideal our people and its Party serve, the ideal of communism.

p We continually hold forth on the importance of ideas in art, on how it is essential that the artist should be in the forefront of the struggle for the building of communist society, yet we often fail to fit the deed to the word, fail to give our art that emotional meaning, the message that is an essential condition for Art with a capital A.

p I am quite convinced that a definite ideological and emotional bias is a sine qua non of art. Without it not a single significant work of art can be produced. In this respect one must be perfectly honest with oneself as regards one’s own work. It is most important to blend one’s own artistic interests with the interests of the people, of the whole country. This will make the artist’s Weltanschauung and his sense of civic responsibility clearly manifest.

p A man may have been endowed by nature with remarkable gifts for stage direction but his work will be fruitless unless he knows life, is aware of his civic responsibility, and feels himself to be a direct participant in the historic task of building the new, communist society. It is important not to be a mere “visitor” in life, but to be a part of life, for only then does perception of the processes of life arise naturally, and only then can the desire to affirm or condemn become an inner need for the artist, as natural and necessary as breathing.

p An unstable civic outlook, lack of sensitivity to the rhythms and movements of life and the failure to accurately discern the direction of its main trends lead to a primitive, superficial understanding of the present day of art, which involves marching forward with the times in the front ranks of the general progress towards the future. All this concerns only the director’s views. His talent-whether or not he can translate his ideological concepts into artistic terms-is quite another matter.

p But until he has decided the meaning of a play, why it should be put on now, he has no basis for discussion with the actors, and hence with the audience, even if he is a giant talent. Method and talent are inseparable from the artist’s Weltanschauung.

If the social role of the theatre and its artistic objectives are understood thus, then the more particular, purely professional objectives of stage direction and acting will be perfectly clear.