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

Subject

Performing Arts

Citable Link

This vivid design features several individually curtained balconies from which figures peer into the room below where Olimpia sits, center, playing a harp. A third level is populated by figures in masks positioned against a ceiling painted like the sky.

Scene design for the Olimpia act of Tales of Hoffmann (Sudeikin)

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque

Sergei Sudeikin, scene design for the Olimpia act of Tales of Hoffmann, by Jacques Offenbach, directed by Fedor Komissarzhevsky, Zimin Opera Theatre, Moscow (1915, production unrealized). КП 60434. Copyright © A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow.

Harlequin stands in the foreground, slapstick in hand, in diamond-patterned motley, while two other figures dance in the background.

Costume design for “Harlequin, Dealer of Slapstick Blows”

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque

Alexander Rykov, costume design for “Harlequin, Dealer of Slapstick Blows,” Borodinskaia Street Studio (premiere: February 12, 1915). Paper on cardboard, gouache, 29.9 × 23 cm. КП 180169/1536. Copyright © A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow.

This image shows two drawings, one of a stage with multiple curtained entrances and side balconies (left), the other diagramming how actors were to move across the forestage in relation to one another (right). They are annotated with notes in Meyerhold’s hand that indicate that both illustrations were to appear together on the page following Soloviev’s article.

Illustrations for “Experiments with Staging the Night Scene”

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque

Proof sheet illustrations by Alexander Rykov for Vladimir Soloviev’s article “Experiments with Staging the Night Scene” (with handwritten notes by Meyerhold) for the journal Love for Three Oranges: The Journal of Doctor Dapertutto (Liubov’ k trem apel’sinam: Zhurnal Doktora Dapertutto) (May 16, 1915). ГИК 17118/2, f. 44, ed. khr. 3. Copyright © Saint Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

This journal cover, painted in blue, beige, and orange, depicts a lavishly curtained stage on which a commedia dell’arte actor stands with three enormous oranges as three other actors peek out from the wings.

Cover design for the journal Love for Three Oranges

From Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque

Alexander Golovin, design for the front cover of Love for Three Oranges: The Journal of Doctor Dapertutto, no. 1–3 (1915). PN2007.L5 1915 no. 1/3. André Savine Collection, Rare Book Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

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

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Scene design for the Olimpia act of Tales of Hoffmann (Sudeikin)

Costume design for “Harlequin, Dealer of Slapstick Blows”

Illustrations for “Experiments with Staging the Night Scene”

Cover design for the journal Love for Three Oranges