The Director's Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde

Posner, Dassia N.

Dassia N. Posner

2016

The Director's Prism investigates how and why three of Russia's most innovative directors— Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein—used the fantastical tales of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann to reinvent the rules of theatrical practice. Because the rise of the director and the Russian cult of Hoffmann closely coincided, Posner argues, many characteristics we associate with avant-garde theater—subjective perspective, breaking through the fourth wall, activating the spectator as a co-creator—become uniquely legible in the context of this engagement. Posner examines the artistic poetics of Meyerhold's grotesque, Tairov's mime-drama, and Eisenstein's theatrical attraction through production analyses, based on extensive archival research, that challenge the notion of theater as a mirror to life, instead viewing the director as a prism through whom life is refracted. A resource for scholars and practitioners alike, this groundbreaking study provides a fresh, provocative perspective on experimental theater, intercultural borrowings, and the nature of the creative process.

ISBN(s)

978-0-8101-3356-3 (hardcover)
978-0-8101-3355-6 (paper)
978-0-8101-3357-0 (e-book)

Subject

Performing Arts

Citable Link

Photograph from the end of Princess Turandot. The actors hold the costume pieces they have just taken off while peeking out directly at the audience from the partially open curtain that the forestage servants pull back.

Photo of the finale of Princess Turandot (Nivinsky)

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque and Epilogue: The Afterlife of a Death Jubilee

Finale of Princess Turandot, by Carlo Gozzi, directed by Evgeny Vakhtangov, Moscow Art Theatre Third Studio (1922). Courtesy of Andrei Malaev-Babel.

In this photograph, the cast of Princess Turandot stands on the forestage in evening dress, the curtain closed behind them, looking directly at the audience. Four commedia characters, their faces painted to look like masks, peer between them.

Photo of opening parade, Princess Turandot (Nivinsky)

From Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia and Epilogue: The Afterlife of a Death Jubilee

Opening parade for Princess Turandot, by Carlo Gozzi, directed by Evgeny Vakhtangov, Moscow Art Theatre Third Studio (1922). Photo courtesy of Andrei Malaev-Babel.

Four competing choruses argue on the forestage in front of a vivid pink curtain that is framed by a bright green proscenium arch with towers on both sides. These towers, decorated in Harlequin-style motley, contain balconies from which fools peer down onto the action below.

Curtain design for the opera Love for Three Oranges

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque

Boris Israelevich Anisfeld, Russian (1879–1973), design for Prokofiev’s opera Love for Three Oranges, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago (world premiere: December 30, 1921). Pink Curtain #2, from Love for Three Oranges, n.d. Gouache and watercolor, with pen and black ink, gold metallic paint, and charcoal, over graphite, selectively varnished, on off-white laid paper, 565 × 780 mm. Friends of American Art Collection, 1922.84, The Art Institute of Chicago.

Scene design in red, purple, and blue for The Snake Woman, created in three parts: a front elevation, ground plan, and a detail of the curtain mechanism and attendants. Emphasis in these designs is on the forestage as a primary playing area and on the fully visible attendants who pull back the stage curtain.

Stage designs for The Snake Woman

From Chapter 3: Peregrinus Tyss Meets Pipifax: Eisenstein, the Grotesque, and the Attraction

Sergei Eisenstein, stage designs for Gozzi’s The Snake Woman (February 26, 1918). From top to bottom: stage-within-a-stage, ground plan of the forestage, and forestage “attendants” pulling back the curtain. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, f. 1923, op. 1, ed. khr. 698: 11.

$In this design sketch of a city street, created for Gozzi’s Green Bird, Eisenstein experiments with refracting Sebastiano Serlio’s 1545 comedy stage design (from On Perspective, his second architecture book). Onlooking framing figures are sketched into several of the balconies.$

Scene design for The Green Bird

From Chapter 3: Peregrinus Tyss Meets Pipifax: Eisenstein, the Grotesque, and the Attraction

Sergei Eisenstein, scene design for Gozzi’s The Green Bird (c. 1917–19). Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, f. 1923, op. 1, ed. khr. 698: 28.

The Director's Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde

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Photo of the finale of Princess Turandot (Nivinsky)

Photo of opening parade, Princess Turandot (Nivinsky)

Curtain design for the opera Love for Three Oranges

Stage designs for The Snake Woman

Scene design for The Green Bird