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p I spoke of the “novel of life” as a
means of finding the poetic image of a play. However, before establishing his conception and achieving its scenic embodiment the director must first determine the genre of the work. At this stage he must regard the play not as a novel of life but as a means of reflecting reality from a certain angle, requiring the intrinsic degree of convention. Only thus can he find the concrete scenic expression.

p There arc two aspects to the question of genre as far as the director is concerned; one is feeling the work, understanding and determining its style and genre and the other is the realisation of these features in the actor.

p What is genre? I explain it as follows to my students. Here is an object which we must reflect. Let us hold up a mirror in front of it. If we take an ordinary mirror and place it directly in front of the object, we shall see a straightforward reflection of the object, only the other way round. But if we take a curved mirror the image will be different. And if we place the mirror not directly in front of the object but at an angle, the reflection will be altered even more.

p Film cameramen know that different objects require a different object-glass. We find a set of mirrors, object-glasses, filters and lenses 160 being employed by writers too in the sense that they use different means of reflection for different plays and subjects. There are those who only look at life through a lateral view-finder, while others only recognise sharp-angle object-glasses, and yet others employ stereoscopic equipment. Some reflect life in a clear picture with sharp contrasts, others very softly and blurred as though slightly out of focus, some in colour, others in black and white.

p Every work reflects life in one way or another. Genre is the manner In which it is reflected, the viewpoint from which the author regards reality as refracted in the artistic image. Our task is to penetrate the nature of the author’s conception, and determine the quality and degree of convention he employs.

p The more profoundly our study of this manner, the closer we shall approach the individual style and manner of the author in question, the unique features of the work that concerns us.

p If we manage to achieve this same viewpoint employing the means of theatrical art we shall apprehend the genre features of the work.

p What distinguishes one play from another, one genre from another? Above all the “given circumstances”, which are different in every case, in Gorky and Chekhov, Ostrovsky and Pushkin, Shakespeare and Moliere, Pogodin and Arbuzov.

p The means of reflecting life is the artist’s vision, as it were, and the viewpoint depends not only on the writer’s ability to see life in certain of its manifestations but also on his reason for choosing to present one particular slice of life rather than another. If we understand this we shall also understand why it is that Saltykov-Shchedrin sees a man in one reflection and Chekhov, for example, sees him in another. The facts underlying two works may be identical. Sometimes we find two authors presenting a similar period, milieu, and given circumstances, and yet the works are quite different because the authors have reflected them in a totally different manner.

p Let us take, for example, two works that are very different but where the material itself is very similar as regards the time and place of the action, the milieu depicted and the general atmosphere. I have in mind Pisemsky’s novel A Thousand Souls and Saltykov-Shchedrin’s sketches about provincial town bureaucrats. When working on a production of the latter at the Comedy Theatre in Leningrad, I was suddenly struck by the great similarity between the events in the work of the great satirist and part two of A Thousand Souls. I realised that here was the same provincial town, the same district office, the same way of life, the same people. It was as though the two writers had lived in the same town, knew the same people and were shocked by the same events. The two works they wrote have the same object but completely 161 different ways of reflecting it, different vision, different thoughts refracted in the work through the writer’s prism, through the “magic crystal” to use Pushkin’s expression.

p Reading these works, we realise they are written in different genres.

p In the case of the works of Anatole France and Kuprin; for example, it is easy to see the difference between them, since the object of reflection, the life reflected in their works is completely different, and it is always easier to discern the difference between contrasting things than things that are similar. It is far more difficult when the object of portrayal is one and the same world taken in contrasting aspects.

p The bureaucrat in A Thousand Souls and Saltykov-Shchedrin’s bureaucrat arc similar characters acting in similar circumstances. Should there be a difference in their scenic embodiment? If so, what method should one use to show that the same person is seen through the eyes of different writers?

p A superficial acquaintance with Stanislavsky’s teaching has produced a certain amount of confusion in the minds of some directors. They tend to confuse the concept of real-life truth with the concept of artistic truth. Truth in life and truth in art are entirely different things. Different artists describe the same fact quite differently. Their real-life truth is the same, but their artistic truth is different.

p When Stanislavsky insists that one must be equally truthful in comedy, tragedy, melodrama and vaudeville he is referring to artistic truth and not real-life truth.

p One must always be truthful and natural on the stage. Although people don’t talk in verse in life, in the tragedies of Shakespeare or Pushkin this is perfectly natural. In real life animals have not the gift of speech, yet we are quite prepared to accept that they have in a fable.

p Directors who attempt to find some general truth common to all plays and dramatists, who try to present life with photographic accuracy and always keep the same simplicity and naturalness in the acting are really doing constant violence to the truth, distorting it. Such directors blame Stanislavsky and the realist method for monotony, drabness and artistic levelling, when the whole source of the trouble is not fidelity to Stanislavsky and the method of socialist realism but betrayal of it.

p Stanislavsky and socialist realism do indeed require truth all the way. But truth in a comedy of manners and truth in vaudeville are quite different, as are truth in a romantic drama and truth in a tragedy,, or Vishnevsky’s truth in The Optimistic Tragedy and Korneichuk’s truth in The Death of the Squadron.

p There is Chekhov’s world, Tolstoi’s world, Gorky’s world and Stendhal’s world. Every writer has his own special world in every work. 162 Gorky’s Old Man and The Philistines are quite different. Thus one must seek differences even between the works of the one author. Gorky’s The Zykovs must be played in one key and The Artamonovs in another, The Barbarians one way and Yegor Bulychov another way. There is nothing easier than to find similarities between them: their similarity is obvious, for all these works are in the realist manner. It is important to find their specific features, the differences between them.

p In Stanislavsky’s teaching we find a concept which, if developed in practice, will lead us to the correct conclusions. It is “the nature of feelings” inherent in a work, the spiritual essence of a work. Every play is a new world, and this world has its own special nature of feelings, requiring its own special “tuning” of the actors’ soul. This is what gives rise to scenic truth. We know in theory that there is no single general truth, but in practice we do not always manage to find the truth that is the only valid one for a given play.

p How then can we determine the genre of a play? As I see it, the nature of feelings necessary for a given play is to be established according to the author’s method of selecting the given circumstances and the attitude to the audience, the extent to which the audience is involved in the actor’s existence on the stage. Indeed the difference between authors lies in their method of selecting circumstances.

p What is the difference between Dostoyevsky and Chekhov, for example, from the point of view of their selection and arrangement of the circumstances? I have found that in The Idiot, for instance, each scene begins with what could well be the climax of some other play, even the most tense and exciting play. In Dostoyevsky there cannot be the free calm flow of action characteristic of Ostrovsky’s plays. We arc dealing with a completely different approach, a different method of selecting circumstances. Unless this is found in staging Dostoyevsky the result will be a slicc-of-life drama, which is not Dostoyevsky. We must first possess the key in order to determine how the production should be “tuned”.

p Finding the scenic solution of a particular work means embodying in scenic forms the author’s unique view of life, finding the correct viewpoint, holding up the mirror at the angle from which the author reflected the object and life.

p This means finding a scenic solution appropriate to the author’s intention, or, in the language of the theatre, finding the degree of convention, the nature of the feelings, of the given writer and play.

p The great Stanislavsky left us a vast legacy, including the practical methods of achieving truth on the stage-his so-called “system”. The first half of our century has seen the emergence and assimilation of the new principles represented by the great artistic experience of Stani- 163 slavsky and his theatre. But today an extremely difficult problem faces us. The laws of the actor’s art discovered by Stanislavsky, that is, the laws of the actor’s organic life on the stage, remain as valid as ever, but the method of achieving this truth has been elaborated by .some of his disciples mainly in one genre, the psychological drama. Stanislavsky in his practical work as stage-director showed himself a master at penetrating the most diverse genres. Suffice it to remember his Warm Heart and The Marriage of Figaro. But the method developed by his disciples and applied in theatrical practice today is really only applicable t:> one dramaturgical trend, and when we try to apply it to a work that illuminates reality in a somewhat different manner (Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mayakovsky and Shakespeare immediately spring to mind) we find many “blank spots” in it. In such cases we do not follow Stanislavsky’s behests, we change them.

p Take Molierc’s Le Medecin Malgre Lui, for example, the scene where Sganarellc receives a beating. The whole scene is perfectly simple and straightforward, but it is incredibly difficult to avoid playing it according to the familiar laws of the psychological theatre. It is essential here to find other laws, the laws of people’s theatre.

p Before Stanislavsky complete anarchy reigned in the theatre. The great achievement of the founders of the Art Theatre was the fact that they led the whole company of actors to realism in the most precise •sense of the word, to counterbalance the histrionic, “theatrical” style that had previously been in vogue.

p But fifty years have passed since this great reform, and we are still content to place the mirror directly in front of the object we are reflecting, when we ought to be concerned with more complicated matters, with developing our method further, with achieving truth by using the mirror to reflect the object from other, unexpected angles. In •other words we should go forward with Stanislavsky and not drag the theatre back to old, obsolete forms.

p The experience of another great master of the Soviet stage is unfortunately often underestimated-Vakhtangov, who developed Stanislavsky’s teaching on the basis of his method. Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot was his practical manifesto against the stifling of theatricality. It seems to me that while remaining a devoted follower of his great teacher and adhering to the law he had discovered, Vakhtangov went further than Stanislavsky. He tried to do in the highly conventional genre of the fairy-tale what Stanislavsky had done in the psychological drama. The whole production was based on direct communication with the auditorium, and showed that while this genre demanded application of the same laws as The Seagull, the different truth required a fundamentally different method.

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p Vakhtangov is an example of a genuine masterly penetration of Stanislavsky’s system. It seems to me that W arm Heart was most probably Stanislavsky’s answer to Vakhtangov. Accepting Vakhtangov’s challenge, and deep down inside him agreeing with him, Stanislavsky made his production combine psychological drama and grotesque.

p I do not wish to employ existing definitions of genre since I find them far too general, and the important thing is to approach each play in an individual manner, to avoid generalising unwarrantedly.

p If we make a deliberate attempt to define the individual features of a given play and writer, we shall find there is no such thing as comedy in general or tragedy in general. The terms drama, tragedy, comedy, and so on are so general as to bring us no nearer a correct solution. Nor does it help much if we qualify them with such epithets as “ sliceof-life”, “lyrical”, “romantic”, “satirical”, “salon” and so on. If I have managed to understand an author properly I need not worry about finding a literary definition. This does not mean that we should completely ignore this question, but seven or eight terms are totally inadequate to express the great variety to be found in drama. A single term has to do for a tragedy by Shakespeare or Victor Hugo, Greek tragedy and Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, and to lump together the works of Ilf and Petrov and Jerome Jerome under the one definition, comedy, is to conceal the tremendous difference in their humour.

p Why did Chekhov call his plays comedies? He was terribly afraid of theatrical boredom and was afraid that his plays would be staged as dramas, and would thus fail to put across what he was endeavouring to present. He had a strong aversion for primitiveness, sentimentality and theatricality in the bad meaning of the word. Chekhov was polemicising with the theatre of his day. The Art Theatre had only just begun struggling for a new kind of theatre. He was still rankled by the recent failure of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, and was afraid of the “accepted” means of scenic expression. By writing “comedy” he was eliminating the danger. Let them play it as a comedy, it would be sad anyway. But it was not up to them to try and make it so.

p It seems to me that in this Chekhov was struggling with the ubiquitous means of scenic expression of his time. If we recall Chekhov’s conversations with Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko we can sec that he was constantly endeavouring to bring the interpreters nearer to the truth.

p Our aim as directors is to ensure that the means of theatrical art serve to achieve the clearest and fullest expression of the author’s intention and, by seeing life through his eyes, to find the standpoint chosen by the author himself for presenting and reflecting real-life •events. This is an extremely difficult task, and it must be solved 165 in all the components of production-pictorial, plastic, rhythmic and so on-in everything of which the director disposes for determining how the spotlight of the author’s eye is trained on the stream of life, on the combinations of human relationships, on the conflicts, on the material environment in which people move and which the author needs in order to express his ideological standpoint, to reveal what it was that moved him to write his play. We must express all this in scenic terms, and there must be perfect correspondence between the author’s wave-length at the time of writing and the wave-length on which the theatre company headed by the director is working, trying to find the scenic expression appropriate to the author’s train of thought.

p The director’s job here is similar to that of the book illustrator-to penetrate the spirit of the author’s imagination so that the picture accurately expresses his train of thought. Sometimes the correspondence is so remarkable that other artists arc forced to reckon with it. Even Picasso in his Don Quixote is unable to get away from Dore, for the latter’s solution was so brilliant as to have become canonical. Time naturally dictates changes, and in Picasso’s drawing full use was made of the means of graphic art available in the twentieth century, but Dorc’s understanding of Cervantes, of the author’s method of presenting reality is so brilliant as to defy all challenge. The power of scenic penetration into a dramatic work should be measured in exactly the same way. We must strive to find in the art of the stage what Dore found in graphic art.

p I am not suggesting that the stage-director must be simply an illustrator. On the contrary, the director’s job is to penetrate the essence of a work and use expressive means to create a corresponding new artistic image.

p It is the dramatist who determines the content and form of a work. Our task is to hear, see and feel the author’s individual awareness, the unique nature of a play, and translate this into scenic terms. Naturally, like the author, the director must be familiar with the people, the life and events presented in the play.

p But the scenic image in every case must be sought within the work itself. Every author and every work has its own special system of conventions, its “rules of play”. If the director does not like them, he should not attempt to produce the play. But if you like the play you should have the grace to discover and obey the author’s rules and refrain from inventing your own. Indeed, discovering the “rules of play” is the director’s prime task.

p This does not mean that the director merely sees life as reflected by the playwright and that he is thus relieved of the duty of knowing 166 life himself. The point is that the ways of reflecting life for author and director are fundamentally different.

p While for the dramatist life is the source of inspiration, for the director only the play can be the direct source of inspiration. The author reveals his attitude to life through the play, the director through his production of the play.

p The director, like everybody else, sees life from his own particular angle. But when confronted with life reflected and transformed by the author, the director must take another look at life from the author’s standpoint. He must determine as accurately as possible the standpoint from which the author regards reality, the palette, compositional devices, the focus and “exposure time”, and all the individual features of the author’s method of reflecting life. Only then will the knowledge, impressions and sense of life of the director and the cast be properly brought to bear on the production and clothe the text in flesh and blood, enriching the author’s vision of life.

p Only life will suggest to the director the appropriate “rules of play”, the only ones suitable for the particular play in question, and the choice of expressive means that will ultimately determine the realism of the chosen convention.

p Unfortunately, we often sec directors “enriching” a play with their own vision of life, ignoring the dramatist’s standpoint. We can even recall productions where the director’s attitude to life was in direct opposition to that of the author, so that we had the action of The Inspector-General transferred to St. Petersburg, Chatsky appearing now as a Decembrist, now as a liberal-chatterbox^ or Karandyshev in Ostrovsky’s Dowerlesx Bride reciting verses by Yescnin! . . .

p There arc cases where the author indicates his attitude by subtle hints and the director decides to make everything more explicit; or the aiithor expresses his attitude to people, facts and events in a forthright didactic manner and the director sees fit to “soften” the punch. Or the author is indifferent to details of the material environment and the director regards this as a weakness which he seeks to correct; or again the author has chosen to present the general through the particular and the director prefers an overall view.

p As a rule directors are moved by the best of intentions when they perform these operations on a play. Often when commencing work on a production a director embarks on a painful search to decide whether to “tone down” or “heighten” the author, whether to “reveal” or “ conceal”, “narrow down” or “expand”. There is a tendency to regard implicit trust in the author as a sign of impotence on the part of the director, so that for many it has become infra dig to follow the author.

p But it is essential to accept the primacy of the author in deed as 167 well as in word. Otherwise the director will inevitably come into conflict with the content and form of the play and the form of his production will not correspond to the form of the work, but will even be opposed to it, despite all good intentions or progressive views.

p The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

p It is essential for the director to think in the author’s genre-key, to tune in to the author’s wave-length. It is thus as important for me to find the author’s genre as it is for the actor to find the fundamental core, the “kernel” of his role. If the actor has penetrated the core of his part he can live the role in any circumstances and not only at rehearsals and in the situations given by the author. So with the director. Once he has discovered the core of the play he is capable of writing one or several more acts, perhaps less skilfully than the dramatist, not only according to the logic of the work-which even the novice can do-but in the same key as the author would have done it.

p In apprehending the nature of the author I make use of everything connected with the moment the work arose in his creative laboratory. I have to be able to conceive not only the real socio-economic situation in which the author lived but every aspect of his way of life, including, and indeed especially, his personal life. In short, I must find the impulse (which we can never rise to ourselves in the case of a genius) which promoted the appearance of the work in question.

p Sometimes one comes across fascinating coincidences. Thus Lermontov wrote his poem The Caucasus on September 24, 1826. If we turn to his diary we find that he was travelling along the Georgian Military Highway between Vladikavkaz and Tiflis. He jotted down the following: “... a terribly tiring journey. Am I ever going to arrive? The driver is a horrible bore and a boor to boot. I don’t feel a bit inclined to talk to him.” At some point the poet gave the order to stop, got out of the carriage and walked off into the mountains. Then he came back and we have another brief entry: “We’re off again . . . .” It was in the intervening twenty minutes or so that Lermontov conceived the idea for his poem The Caucasus.

p Or take Kuprin’s reminiscences of Chekhov. Kuprin had come to Yalta to see Chekhov who was very ill at the time. He found Chekhov in extremely low spirits. All day some authoress had been insisting on seeing him but Chekhov’s near ones had been holding her at bay. Eventually Chekhov’s sister, Maria Pavlovna, relented and let her have her way. Poor Chekhov suffered real agonies for four hours with her, and when she finally left he was a pitiful sight. He could not speak to anyone and immediately retired to his room. Kuprin spent a sleepless night watching Chekhov’s window where the lamp burned 168 beneath its green shade until morning. And in the morning Chekhov read his short story “The Drama”. The same fact that was a sad, dramatic story for Kuprin was seen by Chekhov in a humorous light, and made into an amusing story where there is not a shadow of pain. My reason for citing these examples is that they illustrate very well how the connection between real-life events and the creative impulse is by no means always a straightforward one. An attempt to discover the origin of the creative process helps the director to tune in to the author’s wave-length.

p In order to grasp the genre and style of a play it is necessary to seek the emotional impulse that moved the author to write it. One can make manifold interesting discoveries provided one searches intently without dabbling in literary-historical analysis or abandoning the emotional criterion. It is possible to plough through countless volumes without coming any nearer to understanding a work, and it is possible to read very little and find something extraordinarily valuable and useful. The director’s mood at the time when he began work on a production, that is at the stage where he is familiarising himself with the work itself, is of tremendous importance here. Every director must remember cases when a most interesting production failed to produce the expected effect on a person one felt was bound to appreciate it. I attribute this to the influence of a frame of mind on the work. There is the theory of conditioning in psychology. The organism is conditioned to some extent by environment-by temperature and various external irritants. Man’s entire psycho-physical organism adapts itself to some extent to such factors, and this process of adaptation can also take place in the imagination.

p I remember a most interesting experiment a leading Georgian psychologist conducted in the days when I worked at the Theatrical Institute in Tbilisi. The subject was asked to close his eyes and hold out his hands palms up, and two identical balls were placed on them, either wooden or metal, of exactly the same size and weight. Then he was asked which one was the heavier. He replied that they were both the same. Then a heavier ball was placed on one hand and he was asked: Is this one heavier? He said yes. Next the original ball was put back and he was asked if it was heavier. He said it was. Why? Because his organism had become adapted to the weight and he no longer felt the difference. The organism was tuned not directly but through the imagination.

p This is the principle on which art is based. A person who is not naturally disposed to this will never make a good actor. A person with a purely rational mind where reason outweighs imagination cannot produce a real impact on others. Here is a whole scientific theory in 169 embryo form, which unfortunately has never been developed beyond this stage.

p The fact that a particular production fails to impress me does not necessarily mean that it is bad. It could be that I was in a special frame of mind, that life had conditioned my attitude to what takes place on the stage. Thus our complex psychological processes are all reflected in our creative work and our perception of a work of art, so that the circumstances in which one reads a play assumes a special importance.

p I attach singular importance to my first acquaintance with a work. I know there arc some directors who can acquaint themselves with a play in the bus or in the lobby of the Ministry of Culture. But I never do this, for I am afraid of getting a false impression. The first impression is extremely important, and we often let it slip.

p When I speak of mood conditioning one’s reading of a play, I have in mind the need to anticipate the nature of the feelings which one will have to meet later on, in the second part of our work, our work with the actors.

p Another extremely important task is understanding the author’s logic. For example, the logic of Dostoyevsky is quite different from the logic of Chekhov. Compared to Chekhov, Dostoyevsky is wordy. Chekhov insisted on conciseness, while Dostoyevsky’s phrases are heavy and it is by no means always clear what he is getting at. His writing abounds in unfinished thoughts, and it is often necessary to reread a passage to discover its essential content.

p In working on The Idiot we found that each small scene contained enough material for a five-act play. The scene at Ganya’s house, for example, could easily be made into a separate full-length play. Yet the precise form, the “completeness” of Chekhov-so much so that you can feel the very music of the composition-is absent in Dostoyevsky.

p Even the material world has a very different significance in a work by Dostoyevsky than in, for example, a work by Tolstoi. Remember how Tolstoi presents Prince Andrei’s conversation with his father in War and Peace. He begins by describing old Bolkonsky’s room in great detail, drawing our attention to the frame on the wall, the woodwork table and so on. Naturally, in a stage production of War and Peace none of this can be left out.

p In Dostoyevsky’s works on the other hand all our attention is focussed on the things that play a definite part in the development of the conflict, the action and the nature of the characters. If Nastasya Filippovna’s portrait is mentioned in The Idiot it is because it will have a fateful influence on the life of Prince Myshkin. If Dostoyevsky describes the red sofa in Rogozhin’s room, it is because it is here that 170 Myshkin and Rogozhin will lie after the murder of Nastasya Filippovna. If he draws our attention to the portrait of Rogozhin’s father, and Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna notice an extraordinary likeness between father and son, this is not simply an atmospheric detail but is yet another link in the chain of events that will lead the heroes to their fatal end.

p One must on no account introduce things on the stage that will not lead to the effect the author intended. This is a most important point if we are to penetrate the atmosphere, the life, of a work.

p All these points must be analysed in order to understand the style and genre of a play.

p There are some very crude distinguishing features indicative of the genre of a play, such as whether it is written in verse or prose. But we must concern ourselves with more complicated matters. Take dialogue, for example. Do the characters speak long lines, or is every little remark a new character? We often ignore such questions, considering them of slight importance and even primitive.

p Or take stage directions. It is a common practice today, almost “good form”, to completely ignore them. Yet Gorky deemed it worthwhile to give long descriptions of the scene of action, as much as half a page, and is there any reason why we would attach less importance to such directions than to the dialogue, the characters and so on? I am not suggesting that we should follow the directions slavishly. The aim should be fidelity to the essence rather than to the letter.

p It is interesting to note that when the Moscow Art Theatre staged a production of The Philistines that closely followed the text of the play, Gorky insisted that they had not got it right. Yet when the same theatre did a production of ’The Lower Depths in which the designer Simov drew widely on his impression of life at Khitrov market and got away from the stage directions on the whole, Gorky was delighted. V. Dmitriyev’s design for Yegor Bulychov was totally different from the solution suggested by Gorky in the stage directions, and yet Gorky was satisfied with the result. It follows that blind observance of the author’s directions is not enough.

p One must pay attention to the stage directions only in so far as they concern your main interest in a play, the author’s purpose in writing it, his reasons for wishing to draw attention to certain things rather than others. We should devote most of our attention to the nature of the narrative. A play, whatever else it is, is at the same time a work of literature, and we should regard it as such at the first stage of our work on it, endeavouring to interpret the directions from a literary point of view-there is no need to be afraid of the word “litcrary”-and read their meaning. We must pay attention to the manner in which 171 the directions are set forth, for they are the only places where the author himself addresses us directly in the play.

p The stage directions have a direct conditioning effect on the work and it would be wrong to regard them as purely auxiliary and subsidiary.

p The relationship between the actors and the audience is another factor determining the genre of a work, and the nature of this relationship is inherent in the very fabric of the play, in its content and form of literary expression. At the very beginning of the performance the actor informs the audience of the “rules of play” that are to be applied on this occasion. In some case this involves speaking directly to the audience, in others it means acting as though there were no audience. This communication with the audience can be very complex. Thus, by his very behaviour on the stage the actor can warn and hint, or encourage confidence. Moliere’s Harpagon speaks directly to the audience, whereas in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters it is as though there were a fourth invisible but impenetrable wall separating the stage from the auditorium. The relationship between actors and audience does not necessarily have to be openly declared but the director must always clearly define it if he is to determine the genre of the work.

p In our production of When the Acacias Bloom at the Gorky Theatre the performance opens with an actor coming on and announcing: “ Today we are performing a play,” to which another actor adds: “A concert.” This latter remark gives the key for the whole performance, the key in which the relationship between the actors and the audience is to proceed and to which all the actors must adhere throughout.

p To take a simple example, we theatre folk have a tradition of getting together and performing improvised sketches for one another’s benefit and entertainment. Here the nature of the feelings arises spontaneously, without rehearsal, and it is simply a question of beginning in a certain key and continuing in it. Such a get-together may be a success or a flop, witty or flat, but there is absolutely no doubt about the object and the nature of communication with the audience. If the general public were admitted the effect would be quite different, for a new audience would require new “rules of play”.

p One must have a very good knowledge of people’s thoughts and interests in order to achieve the right sort of attitude to the circumstances in question and live at the auditorium temperature, as it were. Some sort of link across the footlights is inevitable anyway. Take a one-man sketch, that good old stand-by, a study of a fisherman, for example, performed by the dramatic actor Lebcdev and the comedian Arkady Raikin. They will naturally employ completely different means of communicating with the audience as dictated by their objectives. 172 Raikin’s performance will be more concise and expressive in accordance with his aim of putting across as much as possible as quickly as possible, whereas Lebedev’s performance will be more detailed and authentic, since his aim is to involve the audience in his scenic life to the best of his ability.

p So far I am speaking in terms of the point of departure, without which it is quite impossible to present the author’s world in a genuinely original manner.

p Thus, the right to draw out the time is also contracted with the audience. It is not only technology, but a means of selection of the given circumstances.

p In the finale of our production of Korneichuk’s The Death of the, Squadron, when the sailors came on one by one, there were people who said: “Come off it! Enough’s enough!” Such people had not accepted the “rules of play”. Suppose you have somebody standing smoking in silence. The first second it is quite alright, by the third it is becoming a bit of a bore and by the fifth you may have a sneaking suspicion that someone is pulling your leg.

p Thus understanding the genre nature of a play for the director means knowing what contact to establish with the audience. Often the director and actors feel this spontaneously, intuitively, but we ought to be endeavouring to make this a deliberate, conscious approach.

p During rehearsals for Purveyors of Glory Stanislavsky created just the atmosphere the work required. Having turned in to the author’s wave-length, he infected the actors with the power of his genius and in the course of rehearsals guided them into the appropriate nature of feelings. It was this that determined the style of the comedy, the degree of convention.

p In working on The Fox and the Grapes we decided it should be played as a “market-place” debate. There was thus no need for authentic real-life details, and the scenic area and all the various elements of the production were subordinated to the debate on the meaning of freedom.

p When we began rehearsing Gorky’s The Barbarians we decided that the genre was tragicomedy. I saw the contrast between the humorous and the tragic to constitute the key to the solution of this work, and thus had to bear it in mind in selecting and combining the “given circumstances”. We strove to stress it in every “piece” of the work in order to create a consistent line of action throughout.

p It was necessary to ensure that the actor derived pleasure from the combination of humour and tragedy in his role, from the constant combination of hot and cold, black and white, and all this within the framework of the author’s logic and external authenticity.

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p I make a special point of the latter in this case, since unless this condition is observed it is only too easy to slip into the wrong genre, the genre of Gogol or Shchedrin, for example, who are wont to ignore strict external verisimilitude and in whose works a powerful element of psychological grotesque often holds sway. There is nothing of this in Gorky’s combination of tragedy and comedy, and the acting must be styled accordingly.

p As I see The Barbarians, the whole play is based on the principle of combining comedy and tragedy. At times Gorky exaggerates the comedy to the point where it becomes grotesque and truly horrifying. There are no exceptions in the play: every character who seems funny at first glance turns out to be profoundly human. Even Redozubov, who to begin with appears as a provincial scarecrow.

p The humour lies only on the surface-Redozubov putting up posts in the middle of the road that are no earthly use to anybody, and insisting that his son wear a fur coat in summer to make him lose weight. But unless there is tragic paternal love and the drama of a life of failure behind this facade, unless one feels a touch of human warmth, the essence of Gorky’s character will be missed entirely.

p Or take Golovastikov. He is a mean snooper and spy, an extremely nasty piece of work, an epitome of vice. Yet in him all this is funny and is presented in the “given circumstances”. However, there is another, more important thing, which is tragic. He is a martyr patiently bearing his cross, for he knows that he is intensely disliked by all and accepts it as his preordained lot. He is convinced that his deeds are the will of God, and this is not only humorous, it is horrifying. The essence of character is thus a combination of dispicability and martyrdom.

p Or take the doctor, making his thirty-eighth declaration of love to Monakhova. When he gets down on his knees before her there must be a moment in which the audience experiences a feeling of awe at the sight of a human heart laid bare before them. But a moment later he drops his glasses and Monakhova exclaims: “A fine lover you are!”, and he is once more laughable.

p I regard this contrast between the humorous and the tragic to be the key to all the characters and the whole play. When Lidia Ivanovna says: “How pitiful these women are!” one is tempted to laugh, because she does not realise that she is every bit as pitiful as the women she is deriding. Here the humour is of a somewhat different kind, since she has a rather special nature. Yet even so, even in this, the most neutral of the characters in the play, the combination of humour and tragedy is undoubtedly present.

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p The interpretation of The Barbarians as a tragicomedy, it seems to me, serves to bring out the author’s idea most sharply and is appropriate to his particular manner, distinguishing him from say, Chekhov. If this approach is realised in every single element of the scenic action, the appropriate style of acting will emerge. That is why I was not content simply to take the “given circumstances” as they were but sought the key to selecting them, the manner of scenic acting necessary for this particular play. And I tried to use this key to open the characters in the play. This involved various tasks, some more difficult than others.

p I have often seen Monakhov played simply as a tragic, awesome figure. But to forget that Monakhov was leader of the local firemen’s band, that he was the “life and soul” of provincial town life, the most “aristocratic” figure on the local scene, to forget how proud he was to have for a wife the most sublime and remarkable woman in the whole town, is to lose the comic element in this character, so that one is left with a purely dramatic solution to the role which fails to reveal the true essence Gorky intended.

p Let us take a more complicated case-Cherkun. The humour in this character derives from the fact that here is a man who while boasting strength and affirming the collapse of the old order, turns out, when put to the test, to be a typical soulless philistine. At the same time, he is horrifying in his inhumanity and indifference to his fellow men. If Cherkun is played in a rough, sharp manner, the character is flat. It is necessary to seek Cherkun’s weakness in his strength. This is very subtly presented in the play itself. Cherkun displays resolution in driving away Dunka’s helpless husband, yet is completely helpless when faced by the strong Monakhova. Cherkun combines apparent strength with inherent weakness.

p Note how Gorky pulls the wool over the audience’s eyes. Up to the middle of Act Three Cherkun is a perfectly irreproachable positive hero. There is only one warning detail that cautions us (like the green belt worn by Chekhov’s Natasha) and that is his rude treatment of his wife. And what a great surprise lies in store for us in Act Four!

p Determining the genre of a play helps us in our practical approach to what is known as the scenic nature of the feelings. This can be achieved in different ways, but it is essential to set oneself the task of discovering in a play those features which provide a clue to the only correct selection of the given circumstances. This is the beginning of the work which will bring us closer to apprehending the nature of the feelings in the acting and will help us later on when together with the actor we come to search for the motives and paths which will reveal the world of the play in question.

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p Determining the genre of the play, later taken to its conclusion through the live actor, is the least explored sphere in the whole of our methodology today, a real terra incognita. The Soviet theatre has been very successful in penetrating the genre of plays from the point of view of means of scenic expression-the scenic solution, production devices, music, etc.-but we know very little about how this is expressed in the manner of acting.

p The director must help the actor find the right key for his performance, help him determine the difference in the manner of performing different plays and authors.

p Every author offers his own “rules of play”, his own “boiling point”, his own time count. To determine exactly what it is and reveal it via the actor is an extremely difficult but satisfying task. There are classic examples of this.

p The Vakhtangov Theatre production of Princess Turandot has gone down in the history of the Soviet theatre because Vakhtangov and the whole company found the exact key to the play and to the audience, with their modern interpretation of an old fairy-tale.

p The four masqucs-Tartaglia, Pantalone, Brighella and Truffaldinowerc the best possible means of expressing an ironic attitude to the tragic events of the life of Princess Turandot, Prince Kalaf, and King Altown. A great deal has been written about the production, and it can be taken as proven that such brilliance could never have been achieved without the inspired, bold, highly original acting of Shchukin, Simonov, Mansurova, Zavadsky and many others. They played the sages and the figures of state as naive as children, princesses who arc as capricious as spoilt society ladies, and femmes fatales every bit as “fatalc” as the heroines of the silent films in a remarkably serious and almost dramatic manner.

p Stanislavsky’s production of Warm Heart could never have been what it was but for the fact that Moskvin, Tarkhanov, Khmelyov and other members of the cast believed that this particular play of Ostrovsky’s should be played in those particular years in a pungent psychological-grotesque style.

p Our big trouble is that our actors tend to act exactly the same in all plays irrespective of their genre and style. In order to enter into the author’s manner and style, into the genre, it is not enough to find the spatial solution, the degree of convention and authenticity in the action and environment, and various other aspects of the director’s activity: this is not even half the job. The most important thing is to find the style of acting appropriate to this particular work and no other.

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p All too often we are treated to productions where the director has found an interesting and basically correct interpretation, but the acting is exactly the same as it was in the production of the day before in the theatre’s repertoire.

p Sometimes an actor or actress senses the style quite spontaneously, intuitively, but to date our understanding of this is inadequate to provide the basis for a method. In the Art Theatre production of lartuffe, for example, in my opinion V. Toporkov was the only one of the otherwise excellent cast who acted as Molierc demanded.

p It cannot be said that the rest of the cast did not act according to the logic of their roles or failed to achieve organic life on the stage. The trouble was that they were not acting in the emotional key necessary for Moliere’s comedy.

p While the Art Theatre has been remarkably successful in finding the author’s style and the appropriate manner of acting in the plays of Chekhov and Gorky, Tolstoi’s The Fruits of Enlightenment and A. Kron’s Deep Reconnaissance, as soon as it comes to plays that reflect reality from a sharper angle and employ a greater degree of convention we are dealing not with a method applied consciously and consistently by the whole company but with a few instances of purely instinctive feeling for the author’s style and manner.

p It is necessary to find the buttons that must be pressed in order to open the door to the nature of the feelings of the author in question. Leonardo discovered the laws of perspective and they are permanently valid. We also have at our disposal laws that are permanently valid for portraying live human beings. But we must find different ways of applying these laws, and this is an extremely difficult task.

p As I see it, it is a question of finding such techniques as will enable the actor to live and act in accordance with the nature of a particular work which has its own special slant on life, and not simply exist organically “in general”. In other words it is a question of creating the one and only appropriate environment for such acting.

p In this sense I regard Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot as a masterpiece not only by virtue of its “socio-theatrical” significance but also because of the brilliant way the organic life of the actors was found throughout the scenic action of a highly “theatrical” play.

p The whole production was a vivid demonstration of Vakhtangov’s famous slogan “Even in the circus one can and must act according to the system”. While being highly theatrical in its external effects, basicimprovisation was subordinated to elements of the system.

p It often happens that a director correctly grasps the genre of a play, but fails dismally to introduce it in his work with the actors. He is impatient to achieve the desired result and is unable to gradually and 177 consistently lead the actor towards it. And the actor too frequently wants to embrace what he considers to be the whole but is really something vague and general, endeavouring to draw this out from beginning to end.

p I remember seeing a performance of The Three Sisters where this was very much the case. I was absolutely horrified by the way Natasha was played in Act One as a highly unpleasant person when the most important thing is to show what she has that could make an intelligent and subtle man like Andrei Prozorov fall in love with her. Natasha must be absolutely charming and attractive. There is just one warning detail later on-thc green belt. But this actress had already put all her cards on the table in the first act.

p I repeat: for me the ideal examples of felicitous discovery of the appropriate style of acting are Warm Heart and Princess Turandot. This is an unattainable ideal, but one that we should nevertheless aspire towards.

p I am not suggesting that I know how to reveal the nature of scenic feelings, that during my own rehearsals I am a hundred per cent successful in conjuring up a single nature of feelings all the time. In order to determine the nature of the feelings it is necessary to reveal the fundamental characters of the heroes and the actors’ artistic credo. This is the stage of elementary multiplication tables, as it were, and we still have a long way to go to higher maths but one must have a high ideal in life.

p Every new production should involve some new advance in art. And there is no panacea: whenever we come to examine the reasons for a failure we find that they are manifold.

p Many chance elements creep in, there are various reasons to account for a failure to understand a work properly, and so it is difficult to find a general rule. Some critics do try to discern a general pattern by devising a theory and the proceeding to make the facts fit the preconceived design. Nothing of any use is going to come from this approach. What we need is a consciously defined ideal. And if you see & grain of truth somewhere, analyse it in order to derive benefit from it.

The question of genre is extremely complicated and very little has emerged by way of theories of its practical (scenic) application. Since aesthetics arc offering us so little in this respects, those of us who are not professional art theoreticians have no alternative but to seek the answers to these questions in practice. One thing is certain: unless we find the answers we arc not going to make any headway.