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

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.
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  • 978-0-8101-3356-3 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-8101-3355-6 (paper)
  • 978-0-8101-3357-0 (e-book)
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  • Performing Arts
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Set model of the streamlined, angular simultaneous setting for The Hairy Ape. It depicts three levels of action: an upper deck, cabins, and the stokehole deep in the bowels of an ocean liner.

Set model for The Hairy Ape

From Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia

Set model (authorized reproduction, 1927) for The Hairy Ape, by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Alexander Tairov and L. L. Lukianov, designed by the Stenberg brothers, Moscow Kamerny Theatre (premiere: January 24, 1926). 87.5 × 66 × 71.5 cm. TWS BM89. Copyright © Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, University of Cologne, Germany.

This photograph shows The Hairy Ape’s stokehole workers, bare-chested with white-painted faces. The rhythm of their coal shoveling is arrested by the unexpected appearance of Mildred, who cries out in alarm at their animal-like conditions.

Photo of the stokehole scene, The Hairy Ape

From Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia

Stokehole scene, The Hairy Ape, by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Alexander Tairov and L. L. Lukianov, Moscow Kamerny Theatre (premiere: January 24, 1926). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (1902–1968) Collection, THE B MS Thr 402, Box 38, Folder 13. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

This photograph shows the mannequin-like Fifth-Avenue fox-trotters in The Hairy Ape.  The women are made up to look like dolls, while the men wear half masks with distorted mouths on the lower portions of their faces. Yank (left) gazes at them in anger and alarm.

Photo of the Fifth Avenue scene, The Hairy Ape

From Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia

Fifth Avenue scene, The Hairy Ape, by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Alexander Tairov and L. L. Lukianov, Moscow Kamerny Theatre (premiere: January 24, 1926). Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, f. 2030, op. 1, ed. khr. 329: 27.

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