Russian Theatre in Practice: The Director's Guide by Skinner Amy (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 167 dominate with its single, monologic voice and those dissenters who pursue alternative forms of thought and discourse. There is an intriguing logic to this book, and how Reich juggles close readings, literary genealogies, medical reports and theory, among other things, speaks to her abilities as a skilled analyst of these varied materials. What makes Snezhnevskii, leader of the so-called Moscow School of psychiatry, especially powerful as a villain for Reich’s account is not so much what he himself accomplished during his reign as Soviet Russia’s premier psychologist. Rather, it is what he represents: the corruption of psychiatric science that pushed authors to experience a need to prove their sanity before a state that seemed itself to have lost sense. At times zooming in to the level of parts of speech in a poem, at others expanding outward to the broad historical factors at work in the post-Stalin era, Reich offers a thorough and engrossing story of this battle of wills fought in examination rooms and in samizdat publications. Department of Modern Languages and Literatures José Vergara Swarthmore College Skinner, Amy (ed.). Russian Theatre in Practice: The Director’s Guide. Methuen Drama, London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi and Sydney, 2019. xv + 278 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £24.00 (paperback). Twelve brief essays covering a period from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day, written by six male and six female contributors advocating the theoretical and practical importance of eight male and four female theatre directors, form the content of this ambitious student handbook. The names of the subjects are both well-known and less familiar, as are their formal means and methods, including puppetry and children’s theatre. The book’s format is very attractive, consisting of bite-sized sections prefaced by bold, indicative headings interspersed with areas of highlighted text containing advice on ways to match acting theory with directorial practice. As far as the choice of practitioners is concerned, the pre-1945 group are virtually self-selecting — Stanislavskii, Vakhtangov, Meierkhol´d, Tairov and Mikhail Chekhov. Less well-known are Aleksandra Remizova (pedagogue and director), Natalia Sats (children’s theatre specialist) and Nina SimionovichEfimova (puppeteer). The post-war selection, once again, includes the more and the less familiar: Oleg Efremov and Anatolii Efros among the former, with Mar Sulimov (pedagogue and director) and Genrietta Ianovskaia (Theatre for Youth) among the latter. The editor is alert to criticism of what might be SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 168 considered controversial choices for inclusion, plus the absence of other key figures, descriptions of whose work the reader is advised to consult elsewhere. It is extremely difficult to do justice to the lifetime’s work and theories of an important director in the space of a few pages but, in the case of major luminaries such as Stanislavskii and Meierkhol´d, the contributors can point to a mass of external reportage, including detailed accounts of productions and elucidations of theory. The problem with the lesser-known figures is that their champions need to justify their inclusion by explaining the precise nature of the subject’s importance which, in the absence of easily accessible external referencing, poses problems that not every essayist manages to solve effectively. Indeed, in some cases, descriptive and exegetical powers are less than adequate. There are exceptions, such as the contribution on Mikhail (Michael) Chekhov, which ought to be of genuine assistance to any aspiring student director. The remainder read either like synopses of more substantial published work and therefore suffer from the effects of compression or, where English may not be the writer’s first language, exhibit a degree of expressive deficiency and/ or stylistic bathos requiring radical, even ruthless editorial intervention, quite apart from improved proof reading. Other drawbacks include a lack of intellectual clarity when it comes to substantive analysis of ways in which the selected directors put theory into practice, and the frequent resort to mere biography. In the case of the post-war grouping, the citation of critical responses to their work would have enhanced a reader’s appreciation of its value, especially where productions have been seen both at home and abroad. It...