SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 172 Aquilina,Stefan.ModernTheatreinRussia:TraditionBuildingandTransmission Processes. Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, London and New York, 2020. xii + 229 pp. Illustrations. Notes. References. Index. £75.00. The first thing to note is that Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama have done their author few favours in agreeing to publish this book in its present form. Stefan AquilinaisdirectorofPerformingArtsattheUniversityofMaltaandispossibly fluent in spoken English. However, his command of English literary expression leaves much to be desired, although he cannot be held responsible for the unacceptably poor level of proof reading on display. Any conscientious editor could have identified matters that should have been remedied before the book went to press. These include grammatical waywardness, stylistic anomalies, misprints and misspellings, incorrect play titles, illogical sequencing, repetitiousness and poor translation from both Russian and German, all of which seriously detract from any merits the book might otherwise possess. The author’s intellectual stamina is not in doubt but, in tending to foreground the first person singular throughout, he betrays a confidence in his own exegetical powers which should have been restrained by any competent editor or proof reader employed by the publishers who, in the final analysis, must bear the brunt of the blame for this mishandled enterprise. The book’s subtitle, with its reference to ‘building’ and ‘transmission’, deploys these terms to ubiquitous effect, but rather like a famous comment made about metaphysical poetry, they tend to be heterogeneous ‘conceits’, or concepts, ‘yoked by violence together’ — in this case often arbitrarily and confusingly. The scaffolding which upholds the ‘building’ metaphor consists of numerous academic references in support of what are often bland or unexceptional statements. These certainly illustrate the author’s wide and eclectic reading, but their proliferation tends to downgrade their significance to the point where they become a mere collage of academic touchstones made to serve as positive evaluation of what are otherwise questionable pronouncements. There is a real danger, at times, of these sources being discredited by mere association. The notion of ‘transmission’, meanwhile, assumes a variety of guises and is deployed throughout as a false marker of coherence in an otherwise fragmented and often illogical discourse, the overall effect of which is one of linguistic excess with hyperbole a substitute for direct, unvarnished statement. An example is the following taken from an endnote: ‘Historical contextualisation is a historiographical methodology that I use on occasion to unpick historical material’ (p. 199). The ostensible theme of the book concerns the development and transformation of earlier forms of theatre and theatrical practice in the special conditions prevailing in Russia and the Soviet Union during the early REVIEWS 173 part of the twentieth century. The focus is on well-known theatre directors such as Stanislavskii and Meierkhol´d, as well as less familiar theorists, polemicists and practitioners; in this instance, Valentin Smyshlaev, Platon Kerzhentsev and Asja Lacis, all three of whom are being rescued from comparative obscurity. In the case of Stanislavskii, the ‘transmission’ of his influence is linked to a German actor of the period, Ludwig Barnay, while similarly arbitrary attention is devoted to rehearsals of Ostrovskii’s play with a theatrical theme, Talanty i poklonniki (Talents and Admirers, 1881). An example of the disservice afforded the distinguished director in this latter instance can be illustrated by the bathos of the following observation on his rehearsal methods: ‘Stanislavsky spoke about acting through the images of diving into a pool, opening doors, ripping off necklaces, playing chess, riding horses, painting a wall, a swan unravelling its neck [sic] and so on…’ (p. 50). A good deal of the section on Smyshlaev and Kerzhenstsev, both of whom championed post-Revolutionary amateur theatre and the work of Proletkult, is politically tendentious and relies on translation of hitherto unavailable theoretical works by both men, the quality of which, unfortunately, does not assist an appreciation of its merits. The following revelation is attributed to Smyshlaev: ‘He opened his essay on a theoretical slant, [sic] by saying that the most significant aspects of theatre are action and dialogue’ (p. 126). The treatment of the notorious Party hack, Kerzhentsev, in the context of his earlier writings, seems part of an attempt to rescue him from the opprobrium of his association with...
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Feb 16, 2022
Konstantinos Pantos + 10
Open Access
