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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)
  • 978-0-8101-3356-3 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-8101-3355-6 (paper)
Subject
  • Performing Arts

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  • Introduction: Hoffmann’s Prism2
  • Chapter 1: Meyerhold-Dapertutto: Framing the Grotesque3
  • Chapter 2: Tairov-Celionati: Mime-Drama and Kaleidoscopic Commedia
  • Chapter 3: Peregrinus Tyss Meets Pipifax: Eisenstein, the Grotesque, and the Attraction1
  • Epilogue: The Afterlife of a Death Jubilee1
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  • Kamerny Theatre30
  • commedia dell’arte17
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  • Tairov, Alexander11
  • Exter, Alexandra3
  • Koonen, Alisa3
  • Yakulov, Georgy3
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This short film shows the outside of the Kamerny Theatre, Tairov and the Stenberg Brothers (smoking), and several scene excerpts from The Hairy Ape, including the Fifth-Avenue fox-trotters, Yank's attempt to break the bars that enclose him, and the stokehole pantomime for which the production was so famous.

Filmed scenes from The Hairy Ape

Etching foreground: two male figures in half masks face each other, one holding a wooden sword and cape (left), the other playing a guitar (right). Etching background: a man bows to kiss a woman’s hand.

Franca Trippa and Fritellino, etching

Etching foreground: two male figures wearing half masks, their hats adorned with long feathers, stand facing one another with crossed swords, one wooden, the other real. Etching background: small groups of people look on.

Taglia Cantoni and Fracasso, etching

In this photograph from scene 7 of The Dawns, Meyerhold and Bebutov bridge the forestage and audience with a chorus of actors who form an unbroken human link between the two.

Photo of a scene from The Dawns

Photograph of Alexander Tairov in a blazer and tie, looking gently to one side.

Photo of Alexander Tairov

Photograph of Tyltyl (Khaliutina, left) and Mytyl (Koonen, right), holding hands, shoeless, dressed in stockings and three-quarter-length white nightgowns.

Photo of Tyltyl and Mytyl in The Blue Bird

Cover of the 1910 piano score for Pierrette’s Veil, with an illustration of the dead Pierrot draped on a chair in the foreground and the aghast Pierrette looking at him in the background, both of them in white.

Koonen’s piano score for Pierrette’s Veil

Pencil drawing of a columned ballroom crowded with wedding guests dancing on broad stairs and the floor below. Upstage a balustrade encloses a tiny platform upon which the wedding musicians are uncomfortably crammed.

Mise-en-scène design for the Pierrette’s Veil wedding ball

Pierrette (Koonen), dressed in wedding white, stands on the ballroom steps (center), her arms raised in alarm as she sees Pierrot’s ghost, a diaphanous puppet manipulated by a visible actor, upstage. Curious wedding guests watch her from both sides of the stage.

Photo of the Pierrette’s Veil wedding ball

Profile photograph of Alisa Koonen in the role of Phaedra, her eyes cast downward, wearing a flat, angular headdress.

Photo of Alisa Koonen as Phaedra

Photograph of Alisa Koonen in the armor of Joan of Arc, her heavily gloved hands clasped in front of her, her eyes to one side.

Photo of Alisa Koonen as Joan in Saint Joan

Playbill for Pierrette’s Veil on a single, elongated sheet that lists the production artists and provides a synopsis of the pantomime.

Playbill for Pierrette’s Veil

In this photograph, Pierrette (Koonen), her hair in braids, supports the dead Pierrot (Tseretelli), both lovers in all white.

Pierrette and Pierrot in Pierrette’s Veil

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)

Design by Alexandra Exter for the Kamerny Theatre stage curtain, adorned with animals, birds, diamond patterns, vines, and faces in red, black, blue, green, and yellow.

Curtain design for the Moscow Kamerny Theatre

Playbill design by Alexandra Exter for Thamyris the Cithara Player with a deep blue background and swirling red fabric streaming around a bare-chested woman and man. The words are written in a mix of Greek and Cyrillic letters.

Playbill design for Thamyris the Cithara Player

Playbill that lists the production artists for the final invited dress rehearsal of Princess Brambilla, printed on pink paper.

Playbill for Princess Brambilla general rehearsal

Cubist design for Salomé’s dance of the seven veils, all angles and curves, with Salomé’s arms stretched upward, one leg lifted, an orange veil streaming behind her against the backdrop of a red staircase.

Costume design for Salomé’s dance of the seven veils

Alisa Koonen as Salomé, arms outstretched, wearing a thorny, beaded crown and a dress festooned with strings of beads, with rings on her fingers and a fan in her upper hand.

Photo of Alisa Koonen as Salomé in Salomé

Photograph of Giglio (Ferdinandov) and his Doppelgänger (Vigilev), center, wearing half masks with long, curved noses and dueling with swords while others in black half masks look on. Upstage, standing on one of the set’s several raised sections, stands a figure in black, Celionati (Shchirsky), seemingly conducting the duel as it progresses.

Photo of the duel scene, Princess Brambilla

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