Postscript from Moscow
SCHNEIDER, ALAN
ON STAGE By Alan Schneider Postscript from Moscow Once upon a time, in the late 1920s and middle '30s, most theatrical pilgrimages eventually ended in the Mecca that was Moscow, and in...
...In his final chapter, "Home Thoughts From Abroad," as in "Whither America?," the last in the earlier volume, Houghton expresses his continuing faith in the possibilities of the American theater— chaotic and confused as it sometimes is—in our playwrights, in our young people, in the stirrings of reaction against the commercialism of Broadway...
...Houghton found the Russian theater "still a rugged institution," though only suggesting the excitement and experiments of his first visit...
...and the USSR, the theatrical mission to Moscow has again become respectable—and reportable...
...we are concerned with success and its exploitation...
...In recent years, with a new generation and a new relative freedom spreading across Soviet stages and steadily increasing intercultural exchange between the U.S...
...4) The Russian belief in collective endeavor serves the theater better than U.S...
...He saw some 60 performances, spent time at all the leading theaters and theater schools, had meetings with everyone of interest, at all levels, including a touching conversation with Natalia Sats, former head of the State Children's Theater and recently returned from an 18-year exile...
...But he did find the directing and acting still among the world's best—in the work of Nikolai Okhlopkov (Meierhold's chief disciple) at the Mayakovsky Theater, and of Reuben Simonov continuting the theatricalist tradition of Yevgeny Vakhtangov...
...Typical of the whole is his reaction to Russian scene design: Its once great ideas, which influenced the world's stages, have through retention and repetition become commonplace...
...individualism (which is a mixed curse and blessing...
...Above all, there was an eagerness to go further, to know more, to partake of Western ideas and methods...
...as well as in the newer blood of the Sovremennik ("contemporary") group, reminiscent of our Group Theater...
...Playwriting was just beginning to loose the chain of dogma, though The Irkutsk Story still seemed a soap-opera Our Town...
...the sleeping giant of the Soviet theater remains somewhat old-fashioned...
...But audiences seemed better dressed, more blase, more like the bourgeois spectators of the West...
...Among recent visitors, none is more qualified, or more capable, than Norris Houghton: director, designer, writer and teacher, cofounder of the Phoenix Theater, and author (in 1936) of Moscow Rehearsals, a brilliant and now classic account of the Soviet Theater in its heyday...
...ON STAGE By Alan Schneider Postscript from Moscow Once upon a time, in the late 1920s and middle '30s, most theatrical pilgrimages eventually ended in the Mecca that was Moscow, and in tributes to the excellence and high artistry of the Russian stage...
...The sound effects were as authentic as before and the lighting as bad...
...2) The "revolutionary" society of the Soviet Union is, paradoxically, much more devoted to the classics of the past than is the "conservative" society of the United States...
...3) The Russians are concerned with the dignity and welfare of the artist and his excellence...
...He came across no Titans to match Konstantin Stanislavski or Vsevolod Meierhold...
...If it is slighter in bulk and thinner in texture than its predecessor, this is because the subject itself has lost weight Houghton's eye for human detail is as revealing, his tone as warmly personal as before...
...Houghton's method of observation, as before, was that of a practical theater person...
...His general reaction, just published as Return Engagement (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 214 pp., $5.00) is a "postscript" to his earlier book...
...Fluent in Russian and affluent in Russian friends and acquaintances, Houghton returned to Moscow in the fall of 1960 to bring himself up to date, and to acquire perspective on his own theater...
...He concludes with a strong affirmation of our freedom of expression and creativity, the lack of which has kept the Soviet theater from advancing beyond where it was 25 years ago...
...Houghton emerged with specific reaffirmations, not only for himself but for his American colleagues: (1) The Russians believe in the rationality of the creative process far more than we do, and they are able to pass their understanding on from generation to generation...
...The world has assimilated these ideas, and has passed beyond them...
...He is concerned with production methods, details of stage practice, the life of the theater and of theater people...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 11
