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East Europe's Introspective Theater
| Article
# : |
19873 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
1,899 Words |
| Author
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Claudia Woolgar
Claudia Woolgar is a free-lance theater critic and arts
journalist based in London. |
The August power struggle in the Kremlin came in the middle of the 1991 International Edinburgh Festival. It was a reminder of past political threats and fears, and a reminder, too, of the threat to the very existence of the spirit of the theater in Eastern Europe. And yet, with Scotland playing host to theater companies from Poland, Russia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, festival goers were in no doubt that Eastern European theater had survived communism and was beginning to exercise its newfound freedom of speech.
Perhaps the most overtly political production was Ubu Roi, by the National Theater of Craiova, Romania, which, in scenes from Macbeth, placed Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife on stage as Pa and Ma Ubu, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (reviewed in the January 1992 issue of THE WORLD & I). More subtle social and political commentary was to be found by Czechoslovakia's National Theater of Martin production of Marivaux's La Dispute. Political images were also in the uncontested climax of the festival, Today is My Birthday, Tadeusz Kantor's final play before his death.
Marivaux's tale of social engineering in La Dispute was a fascinating choice by an Eastern European company. On the surface it is a play that poses the question, Which of the sexes was the first to be unfaithful? But the far more menacing aspect of the story is that the play's four characters have been brought up in isolation from any human contact other than with their keepers; they are pawns in an experiment about human nature orchestrated by fellow humans.
The obvious overtones here refer to the attempt in Eastern Europe to put communism in to practice, and the human price paid as a result. But the Martin Theater's reading of La Dispute sidestepped this issue. The only concession to the political environment under which its country has lived for so long was a tall barbed wire fence at the back of the stage through which the four human guinea pigs were led from a life of enforces isolation to their first contact with other people. It was a menacing image, especially as they clawed at the fence to get out, but the dominant theme in this production was not social engineering but human interaction.
This theme was stressed in the subtitle the Martin Theater had La Dispute--"Contacts and Connections". As the structure of the play unfolded and Egle fell in love with Azor, followed by Mesrin falling for Adina, it became evident that this was a production that set out to explore human nature, knowledge of oneself, and interaction with others. It was
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