Curtain Calls & Curtain Speeches, co-moderated by Zhenya Lavy & Annie Paladino.
Annie Paladino and Zhenya Lavy co-moderated a very lively Twitter chat today as part of the HowlRound.com peer-produced conversation series on Twitter at #newplay.
It never ceases to amaze what can be accomplished in 140-character bursts!
If you missed it, the transcript is archived on Storify. Check it out!
Zhenya Lavy, Samantha Routh & Scott Maddock | Uncle Vanya (2014) | Photo: Annie Paladino
It’s no secret that Omar Willey, publisher of The Seattle Star, takes an intellectual approach to his reviews of theatre — to all of his writing — bringing the work into focus that is simultaneously clarifying and expansive, equally accessible to the “who, what, should I go” crowd and satisfying to the academically minded. Considering his own personal experiences making theatre and also working with theatre illuminaries around the world — including Jerzy Grotowski — Willey truly is one of the most ideal local audience members for Akropolis work. (Until his death last May, Herb Blau was another “ideal” person in APL audiences.) For us, “ideal audience members” are people who truly understand where we are coming from artistically — and whether or not they like a particular piece we have created is irrelevant to their capacity to witness it fully and speak about it at every level: text and intertextuality, metaphor, symbol, music, history, aesthetic, physicality, performance…. Their critical apparatus is exceptional. They witness a piece with a perspective that is open and educated well beyond the confines of average American pre-conceptions about what theatre “ought” to be or what is most commonly viewed on stages in Seattle or New York. We usually receive feedback from such people over drinks sometime after a production has closed.
And so, it is especially humbling when someone from among our ideal audience also writes about our work. Willey saw our previous productions of Jeanne the Maid: A Trial and Execution of Jeanne D’Arc and Seneca’s Oedipus but was out of the country for Dream of a Ridiculous Man. This is the first time he has written about us. It’s well-wrought criticism, and we hope our friends will read the entire thing. Here is an extended sample:
Proof of [Chekhov’s] durability is that now, a century after his death, next to Shakespeare’s the most popular plays on the British stage are those of Anton Chekhov.
That popularity however has been truly unfortunate for the American stage. Most translations of Chekhov’s plays have been British rather than American. […]
American theater in its dogged attempt to be British has absorbed all these problems anytime it treats Chekhov, but worse, has absorbed the problem of having no real analogue for either British or Russian society. Instead, it is largely powerless to absorb either. The almost completely clueless adaptations of Chekhov on American stages have been the worst kind of Deadly Theater, socially uprooted, unidiomatic, aimless, remote. The American answer to this problem usually has been to adapt Chekhov, which is to say ignore about half of what makes Chekhov Chekhov. […]
If one believes Rainer Schulte, a successful translation requires the translator to capture three things: the specifics of the life and culture of the country in which the author wrote; historical features of the period in which it was written; and the original author’s sensibility. Not only has Zhenya Lavy’s translation excised the Anglicisms that have clung to English versions of Chekhov like lampreys on a shark’s body, it also has restored to the play certain things that other translators have eliminated simply because they figured the audience was either too stupid to notice or simply didn’t care about (such as Syuzhet, dostoyniy kisti Ayvazovskovo–a reference to Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky). Yet the text speeds along. By adhering to the distinctly shorthand manner of the original language, in which subjects and objects are often implied rather than stated, the English version explains less and expresses more. […]
In short, this is a much different Chekhov from what one is used to seeing on the Seattle stage. It is simultaneously Russian and American, historical and present, funny and melancholy, grotesque and elegant. It is many other contradictory things–just as it should be. Above all, it is alive. […] I hope future productions in town take the hint.
Check out The Seattle Star if you’re hungry for cultural and political journalism done better. You’ll be pleased you did.
Read the entire article here:
“Burying the British: Uncle Vanya,” by Omar Willey, The Seattle Star, March 26, 2014
As Sonya (Margaretta Campagna) confronts feelings of inadequacy in her desired courtship of Astrov, Elena (Samantha Routh) moves in to offer friendship and assistance. | Uncle Vanya (2014) | Photo: Annie Paladino
The Stranger’s Brendan Kiley caught our Sunday, March 22, matinee. With typical trademark sardonic tone — even in moments of complement — his review is primarily straight reportage and doesn’t attempt to address symbolic or metaphorical layers of the production. But he seemed especially appreciative of the music:
The music, directed by Zhenya Lavy (who also translated this world-premiere version of the script), is one of the best things about the show—15 musical numbers, most of them gauzily melancholy but crisply performed.
He also remarked upon the effect of the setting’s immediacy and intimacy, with the actors so close he was, apparently, “tempted to reach out and offer a comforting pat on the back.” One audience member swears she saw him wipe a tear from his eye in Act IV, but nobody in the company can corroborate.
Read the entire review here:
“Cheer Down With Chekhov: A [sic] Intimate and Music-Heavy Uncle Vanya,” by Brendan Kiley, The Stranger, March 26, 2014
As Marina, Zhenya Lavy is ever present on stage… generally in the background. She’s really spinning yarn and really knitting socks! With Joseph Lavy (Vanya) and Margaretta Campagna (Sonya) | Uncle Vanya (2014) | Photo: Annie Paladino
Although Jerry Kraft gives a lot of respect to APL overall, he didn’t think our Uncle Vanya worked and would have preferred for us to have approached the text with more traditional Realism. On the bright side:
The staging is extremely simple and highly theatrical, the focus and intention of the performers obvious and the ambition admirable.
For the acting, Carter Rodriquez gets good mention for a realistic portrayal of Astrov, and “Zhenya Lavy as the old nurse, Marina, was successful at occupying a substantial presence in the background of this production, but she was not a leading character.”
Full review is here: “Uncle Vanya” by Jerry Kraft, SeattleActor.com, March 24, 2014
Marina (Zhenya Lavy) and Telegin (Sean Patrick Taylor) tearing it up with a rousing “Когда мы были на войне” is just one of the reasons Uncle Vanya is the first production in APL’s history to be interrupted midstream by audience applause. | Uncle Vanya (2014) | Photo: Annie Paladino
Congratulations, to the entire company of Uncle Vanya!
We had a highly successful opening weekend, with both our evening shows sold out during pre-sales and enthusiastic audience response.
The first review is a great one. Read it here:
“Uncle Vanya – Brilliant new translation by Zhenya Lavy” by Marie Bonfils, Drama in the Hood, March 23, 2014
Among the highlights:
Akropolis Performance Lab deserves the highest theatre award known to mankind for their production of Uncle Vanya….
…this version of Uncle Vanya was not another fossil in a museum, but a vibrant play propelled by psychic movement.
It was a stroke of genius to stage Uncle Vanya in The Garden House-The Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs.
The Music was to die for!
Doubling as the director, Joseph Lavy delivered a stunningly brilliant performance as Vanya, which was humorous, sad, and deeply moving.
Margaretta Campagna as Sonya, was superb…. She has a commanding voice and presence on stage which made her plight as a plain girl of marriageable age all that more tragic.
All in all this is the best production of Chekhov I have ever seen.
From Eva‘s Facebook post last night:
Waiting in the prettiest wings ever, teching Uncle Vanya.
We think so, too. Thanks for the great shot, Eva!
When Dara Weinberg introduced on Howlround her intention to develop A Polish Theatre Cookbook, APL Co-Artistic Director Zhenya Lavy took issue with what she views as a misguided project. Take a look at Weinberg’s original post for context. This is what Zhenya posted in response:
Perhaps well intentioned, but the central tenet of this project — “[…]how US artists can modify or adapt Polish techniques for their own kitchens” — strikes me as seriously misguided. To say nothing of the Orientalism underlying the endeavor, “Polish theatre” is not homogenous, and it’s not possible to create a recipe/check-list for making it. The initial ingredient list above includes “techniques” (more like a bag of tricks) of a dubious nature, as well as items pertaining to working conditions that are more likely idiosyncratic happenstance of a particular director or project development situation rather than properties of national practice or aesthetic. The decontextualization and oversimplification of the items listed via the cookbook metaphor spells a recipe for disaster — especially when put into the hands of people who don’t have a clue regarding context and/or are lacking the intellectual/artistic fortitude/background/sensitivity to employ the ingredients tastefully.
Remember what happened when an incomplete and oversimplified view of Stanislavski’s work made its way to America? (By the time the Moscow Art Theatre was brought to America, Stanislavki had already evolved his practice beyond a restrictive emphasis on psychology.) We got what has become the very limited, complacent, hegemonous banality so ubiquitous on American stages today. We did not get the quality of work/inquiry actually fetishized by those admirers of Stanislavski who sought to bring his techniques to America. We did not get the kind of work/inquiry more likely to be found today in places such as Central and Eastern Europe, where Stanislavski’s legacy-in-action accounts for a more holistic transmission of his teaching and theories and, perhaps most importantly, has fostered a spirit of continuous inquiry/research and a conviction that — more than just being a well-made story or an object for consumption — theatre art actually can DO something.
It is impossible to substitute for the social, political, religious, historical, and practical contexts in which Polish theatre practice has developed. It is impossible to replicate the cultural environment and rich artistic legacy into which Polish people are immersed from birth and within which their artistic development is shaped. It is a fallacy to suggest that someone can take ingredients x, y, z and create Polish theatre or anything approximating it.
This does not mean I think Weinberg should scrap the project completely. I would encourage Weinberg to focus on the portion that includes reporting from rehearsal rooms and interviewing directors … but to eliminate the cookbook component. Where there is an impulse to hold some “different” technique forward in a how-to fashion, instead consider exploring the systems (government and otherwise) which may have contributed to its development. Consider anything else, please, besides implying that there are quick tricks, simple steps, or even a coherent method for “cooking” theatre like they do in Poland.
Finally, I encourage Weinberg to consider being more mindful of language. Not every point of difference merits the label “technique.” Moreover, referring to techniques as “weird” both polarizes and others your subject.
Absent the prescriptive component, I believe Weinberg’s project has the possibility of making a positive contribution to our understanding of theatre in Poland today.
Weinberg did post a rebuttal. Somewhat better studied but still misguided….
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