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

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

Dassia N. Posner
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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.
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Published: 2016
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-8101-3357-0 (e-book)
  • 978-0-8101-3355-6 (paper)
  • 978-0-8101-3356-3 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Performing Arts

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  • Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque6
  • Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia1
  • Chapter 3: Peregrinus Tyss Meets Pipifax: Eisenstein, the Grotesque, and the Attraction26
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  • Eisenstein, Sergei24
  • Meyerhold, Vsevolod3
  • Temerin, Alexei3
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This rare photograph of Eisenstein and Meyerhold together in rehearsal depicts a bustling creative atmosphere with Meyerhold, center, pointing out something on a piece of paper and Eisenstein, left, sitting behind a round table. Those in the photograph—all men—are in jackets and ties, except Meyerhold, who wears a striped sweater under his open blazer.

Photo of Meyerhold and Eisenstein at rehearsals for The Prelude

Two drawings for The Glass House, annotated in English, in which a transparent glass floor becomes a means for juxtaposing still images with rapidly moving ones: a stationary cat is positioned against "a whirling town," and feet stand on a "glass balcony above the moving street."

Static and moving image drawings for The Glass House

List, handwritten in English, of several of Eisenstein's ideas for scenes in The Glass House that would focus on shifted perspective and juxtaposition.

List of episode ideas for The Glass House

Sergei Eisenstein, drawing (detail) of the sharp shift in perspective made possible by watching scenes from below through transparent floors.

Drawing of scenes viewed through transparent floors, The Glass House

A typed list of the episodes in Inspector General with the run time for each written in by hand.

Chronometrage report for Inspector General

This rare rehearsal photo of episode 1 shows the actors’ long, crisscrossing pipes and their tight semi-circular grouping around the table. The Mayor (Starkovsky, right) stands clutching his heart while Doctor Hubner (Temerin) tends to him.

Rehearsal photo for episode 1 of Inspector General

This photograph shows the Inspector General dumb show mannequins, made by V. M. Petrov, in the process of being created. The bodies are newspaper papier-maché over wire armatures, while the faces (with surprised expressions) are wax. The figures are permanently attached to the small platforms on which they later stood at the end of the production.

Photo of dumb show mannequin construction, Inspector General

Actors stand in a variety of positions, each the personification of shocked dismay, to pose for the creation of the dumb-show mannequins that replaced their live bodies at the end of Meyerhold’s Inspector General.

Photo of actors posing for the dumb show mannequins, Inspector General

This “Record of Audience Responses,” dated December 11, 1924, tracked audience responses for episodes 20-23 of The Forest.

Audience response chart for The Forest

In this scene design sketch, towers flank an ornately carved proscenium arch, the opening of which is bridged by a gymnast's bar that provided a practical playing space in the air above the stage. In the upstage distance are the rooftops of the city of Nuremberg. As is typical of Eisenstein's sketches, the edges of the drawing are populated by faces and figures in varying states of completion.

Design sketch for Master Martin

Rough notes for the first entrance of Pierrot’s friends in Columbine’s Wedding Veil. All the action for the scenes in Pierrot’s garret was to take place on the crossbars of an enormous vertical window. The first drawing in Eisenstein’s notes shows Pierrot’s four friends splitting into two pairs to enter from both below and above. The second drawing has all four of them instead enter from a trapdoor and cross over the top of the window frame.

Notes for Columbine’s Wedding Veil

Costume sketch for Ma, a constructivist character in Columbine’s Garter who is half human, half restaurant. One of her thighs is marked roast (rôti) and the other soup (potage), while her left breast has three taps for dispensing drinks.

Costume sketch for Ma in Columbine’s Garter

Costume sketch for Pa, a constructivist character in Columbine’s Garter who is half human, half toilet. His body is assembled from human and mechanical parts. His top hat is capped with a toilet lid crammed with various newspapers. A toilet tank marked PA juts upward from his body. At the center of his body is the word "Pipifax"––Eisenstein and Yutkevich's joint alter ego.

Costume sketch for Pa in Columbine’s Garter

Rough sketches for a female character in a bowler hat, most likely Columbine.

Costume sketch for Columbine in Columbine’s Garter

Rough pencil sketch of Columbine, in a half mask, above, strangling Pierrot, in a skullcap, below. On the drawing appear the words “venez,” “vous,” and “êtes,” three of the words in the phrase “Venez sans céremonies et telle que vous êtes!” (Come without ceremony just as you are!), which Pierrot says to Columbine just before she comes to his garret to kill him.

Sketch of Columbine strangling Pierrot, Columbine’s Garter

Libretto page from Columbine’s Garter of scenes 4, 5, 6, and most of 7, focusing on “circus” attractions, ending just before Harlequin breaks the musicians’ instruments.

Libretto page from act 2 of Columbine’s Garter

In this costume design, Olimpia, the beautiful automaton in Tales of Hoffmann, is assembled from unnatural cubist shapes that together create a vague impression that she is on the verge of breaking, despite the cheerful look on her doll-like face.

Costume design for Olimpia in Tales of Hoffmann (Eisenstein)

In this costume design for act 2 of Tales of Hoffmann, a female guest wears a purple and orange striped gown, the skirt of which curves out sharply then in again at the base, making her look like a vanka-vstanka (a doll with a rounded base that always returns to its upright position) or an enormous jug. The impression of the latter is strengthened by her vivid green headdress and hair, which together resemble a spout.

Female costume design for act 2 of Tales of Hoffmann (Eisenstein)

In this costume design for act 2 of Tales of Hoffmann, a male guest appears to be part insect, part bird: while his enormous eyes are solid blue, his red on-end hair fans out like feathers. His blue jacket is a deep yellow underneath, and his green-clad calves trail away into nothingness.

Male costume design for act 2 of Tales of Hoffmann (Eisenstein)

Drawing (detail) of P. Dementiev’s proposed solution to how to stage the audience-within-an-audience of Puss in Boots: with the fictional audience sitting along the lip of the stage, their heads ringing the forestage like footlights.

Mise-en-scène drawing for Puss in Boots (Dementiev)

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