tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57846723081147476952024-02-18T20:25:25.532-08:00Michael Craig - Copernicus Films Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-25445850361431164152020-11-26T03:34:00.002-08:002020-11-26T03:34:33.438-08:00The Old Believers Bell Tower<p><span style="color: #242f33; font-family: ProximaNova, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I filmed some material at the gatehouse of the ruined church monument on Baumanskaya Ulitsa. It will fit well with the animated material I am working on at the moment.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have been calling this small monument in the centre of Moscow the gatehouse but it is in fact a bell tower </span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">The Old Belivers' belltower </span></h1><img alt="File:Moscow, Baumanskaya 20C2 - Old Belivers' belltower (21248277245).jpg" isdataurl="false" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Moscow%2C_Baumanskaya_20C2_-_Old_Belivers%27_belltower_%2821248277245%29.jpg/800px-Moscow%2C_Baumanskaya_20C2_-_Old_Belivers%27_belltower_%2821248277245%29.jpg" url="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Moscow%2C_Baumanskaya_20C2_-_Old_Belivers%27_belltower_%2821248277245%29.jpg/800px-Moscow%2C_Baumanskaya_20C2_-_Old_Belivers%27_belltower_%2821248277245%29.jpg" /><div><span style="font-size: 16px;">A dilapidated, neglected and seemingly, in my eyes, a fallen relative of the Ivan the Great Bell tower in the Kremlin. Why it is left in this state I don't know but in some ways I am glad because it retains a broken or ruined character which resists and persists through the centuries and time. It remains only what it is, nothing more and nothing less, an old weathered survivor form past times, from the times of the old believers in Russia with whom it is associated. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: 16px;">Of course it doesn't look like the Ivan the Great Bell Tower but there is in my mind a closeness or imagined kinship between the two towers. The pomp and power of the white bell tower in the Kremlin on the one hand and this diminutive downtrodden and forgotten relic to another age which has survived tucked away in a quiet part of Moscow, a faded echo of its taller cousin. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-80319738714096753382018-09-12T02:44:00.000-07:002018-09-12T02:52:08.617-07:00Evening of Japanese Music in Moscow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A good day - I have <span data-mce-style="font-family: gotham, helvetica, sans-serif;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;">got</span> to grips with editing the first part of <a data-mce-href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com" href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/" shape="rect" style="border: 0px; color: #047ac6; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">The Fairground Booth </a> film which has been dogging me for some time now. Managed to re edit the script and add in new material to flesh out some of the weak parts of the beginning. It means I should be able to assign the graphics and other material to where it should go rather than things slipping away from me as I try and make things work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Working a bit with T's material for his book. He asked me to read the article he wrote for a journal and tell him what I thought about it. Just jotting down some notes now as I go through it. Last night attended a concert and film of a Japanese composer <a href="https://culturalenvoy.jp/en/culturalenvoy/h3001-4.html">Yonekawa Toshiko I</a>, who played and composed for the Koto. Magnificent musician, full of sensitivity and richness of expression, tasteful and emotional. Her daughter is now leading the ensemble which played for us at the Moscow conservatory last night. It is a warm up for the bigger concerts they will give at the Rachmaninoff Hall later. We sat in one of the classrooms. All the windows were open and as dusk fell I looked out across the Moscow sky which was gently bathing Moscow in a sunset glow of red and green and blues.It was a warm evening with gentle breeze. Listening to the haunting Japanese music of Koto, <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">shakuhachi, <span style="line-height: 1.57143em;">samisen<span style="line-height: 1.57143em;"> </span></span></em>and the beautiful voices singing harmony's of some ancient song or hymn, rising, falling like waves on the ocean, soaring between the heavenly and the earthly, between the divine and the human. A magical evening taking us away from the everyday. Plenty of old acquaintances to meet up with although my mood was not very social. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-52854315926506995522018-08-29T03:17:00.001-07:002018-08-29T04:48:30.610-07:00The Fairground Booth update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #383838;">Work on The Fairground Booth film proceeding well: My intention is to start a journal which will chronicle the progress of the actual process of editing and producing the film.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #383838;"><br />Blok's aim in writing</span><a href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/" style="color: #383838;" target="_blank"> <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Fairground Booth</em></a><span style="color: #383838;"> is to liberate us from whatever trust may have been placed in traditional theatrical practice. Part of this process involves another form of understanding. </span><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Fairground Booth</em><span style="color: #383838;"> therefore has a visuality or pictorial sense in its graphic unworded movement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />Blok wants us to see that out of the chaos emerges a new form or sense of order through the theatrical.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />The author is introduced not as a god like creator but as fallible and weak.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />For Blok, the Cosmos as a subject underpins the apocalypse - as in the fall of the stars and the heavens crashing to earth.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The very multilayeredness of themes invokes and multiplies new themes, direction,openings and expansions.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-53511869331393937042017-04-10T01:59:00.002-07:002021-11-11T00:27:11.623-08:00The Russian Theatre Film Series - Book Publication<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://ow.ly/ug7q30aEus8" target="_blank">The Russian Theatre Film Series</a> book - published and available:</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<p style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 6px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It’s difficult to find an appropriate description of the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series". Essentially it is an account of an arts documentary series with all its pitfalls, successes, limitations and achievements. The three films which have so far been completed are "<a href="http://www.meyerholdfilm.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde</a>", "<a href="http://www.stanislavskyfilm.copernicusfilms.com/" target="_blank">Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre</a>" and "</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com/" target="_blank">Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre</a>". This book is part of the overall project - The Russian Theatre Film Series and is a milestone and a marker in this developing project. It is also a commentary on what it means to make an independent arts documentary film series in a foreign country namely Russia. Not so much from the technical point of view although there is plenty of technical aspects covered but more from the point of view of a kind of interior process. It is an expedition into the phenomenology of film-making, what obstacles have to be overcome, both physical and technically but more importantly some of the lived experience of film-making. For some people making independent films is a way of life in the same way that for others theatre is a way of life or acting is a way of life or painting or whatever is a way of life. You can't live without it or outside it. The fact that you have to spend a year or two of your life on each film means that it is a life decision. So it has an existential element and this quality of film-making is explored in the book. How the series came about, what were the thought processes involved in the development of the series, which influenced the series overall - who helped who didn't, why things went wrong and why they went right. The book is a staging post on the way to further developments clearing the ground before moving forward to the next phase - a book about <a href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/" target="_blank">The Fairground Booth</a> plus a film on this subject.</span></span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-82947924041552530182017-03-07T11:53:00.001-08:002017-03-07T12:06:38.366-08:00Biomechanics - Project - Book and Film<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As I come to the end of <a href="http://www.russiantheatrefilmseries.copernicusfilms.com/"><i>The Russian Theatre Film Series</i> </a>book already new horizons opening up. Yesterday completed the artwork fro the cover, so all that remains is to proof read the book one more time and check everything over for layouts and other things. I have been tantalizingly speaking to a publisher but still feel I should work at my own pace and within my own resources although it is always worth exploring all the publishing outlets which might be available.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />Already there are ideas percolating through with regard to <a href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/">The Fairground Booth</a>book and beyond. As always it is too early to write about this as the ideas themselves are appearing more as clues to developing work. One idea is to do another book about the theatre but only biomechanics. To make it more as an illustrated book with pictures but also text. The black and white tones will make I believe a very good visual impact. Working on this tonight - fleshing out a broad plan and outline with possible subjects to be included.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> The book should concentrate on visuals but also have text. It will be like a kind of graphic novel or one could say a graphic non fiction book - is that a new genre? - a hybrid book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="color: black;">Last week we were out during the Maslenitza celebrations in Moscow. At first I didn't even want to go out that day but eventually we decided that we just have to get out of the apartment and walk around. Then once we arrived at the square in Moscow were the celebrations were taking place at he statue of Yuri Dolgoruky I didn't really want to film anything. It didn't seem as if there was anything interesting going on and that all the masks and costumed people were not there. but I got the camera out in any case and began. Then things started to happen. The crowds were moving, there was traditional folk singing and high spirits and there was a guy in an old costume with a hood which began to add to the atmosphere. he made faces at the audience and looked like something from the middle ages - somehow intimidating. Then the masks began appearing and I was filming in full swing. The atmosphere was that of a shrovetide celebration and had an air of authenticity which I was able to enhance and emphasize within an initial edit. One of the masks reminded me of the 4 masks which adorn the Theatre Satyra building in Moscow and combining these images would prove effective. By accident I found a photograph of the building taken at night. I had filmed the building during the day and it was quite bland so I did not use the footage in any of the films I </span><span style="color: black;">had</span><span style="color: black;"> made earlier. At night however the masks are lit from above and below and the effect is very striking. I will go back hopefully in the next few days to film this building from various angles.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-89667437619660550922017-02-11T05:26:00.000-08:002017-02-11T05:26:00.244-08:00The Russian Theatre Film Series<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Cover completed for the Russian Theatre Film series book. A large step forward as I was worried about how it might look. In the end I only spent 3 - 4 hours putting it together ready for printing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The book weaves together the experiences of filming in Moscow and Russia on The Russian Theatre Film Series. How it came together, who were the main characters involved in the series and charts the pitfalls, the struggles and the joys of making independent films in a foreign country in this case Russia, Moscow. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Often I am asked how do you begin to make a film, where do you start. For many it is easy, you start and that's it. For others that first step seems like a mountain standing before them. This book attempts to answer some of those questions by re living the steps which it took to make this series. Not necessarily step by step but the book certainly travels a distance that most independent film makers have to travel, recounting many of the obstacles which are sometimes of our own making.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSFpieoNP_cVnZRv9NmMlfcA77jVW3m3DKIAtdAWZJHuXVZdrsEB62vwy_ob4xbZKakff7wJdvBqOGgIWw8Xy1CZOBIVG9DTSLIPBF7gqOQsE0fqkUuFFP9c8eiSG-o3URKgzU1wfEPFtK/s1600/Cover+Theatre+book+back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSFpieoNP_cVnZRv9NmMlfcA77jVW3m3DKIAtdAWZJHuXVZdrsEB62vwy_ob4xbZKakff7wJdvBqOGgIWw8Xy1CZOBIVG9DTSLIPBF7gqOQsE0fqkUuFFP9c8eiSG-o3URKgzU1wfEPFtK/s320/Cover+Theatre+book+back.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back cover for the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Before publication, (some time before the spring) all that is left to do is check the text once more and arrange the graphics and art work. Once this book is out and published I can start to concentrate on <a href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/" target="_blank">The Fairground Booth </a>book which is at the first draft stage. Work is piling up behind me so I have to clear away as much as I can at the moment.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-6273306755903774682017-02-01T11:22:00.000-08:002017-03-14T05:08:09.884-07:00Screening of Tokyo Journey in Moscow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The first public screening of the film "<i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWFjdnYFuLc" target="_blank">Tokyo Journey</a></i>" took place in Moscow on the 25th January 2017. It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the screening partly because the film is not exactly standard fare and the audience was made up of mostly people involved in teaching and disseminating traditional Japanese culture and Japanese Culture in general.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Several experts and specialists were in the auditorium and I was very much aware of their presence. There is not much more guaranteed to scare the living daylights out of you than watching your own film at a public screening.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still from the film "Tokyo Journey"</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The film was included in an event which was part formal, part informal and included a number of other elements of which <i>Tokyo Journey</i> was a part. The most difficult thing was trying to explain and introduce the film and then comment afterwards to a Russian audience. Talking direct to the public in the Russian language is not something I have done before so it was definitely another first for me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I needn't have worried too much as the film was very favourably received and the context in which it was presented turned out to be successful. What struck me most was that apart from the overall theme of the film how much more the audience got from the film. One person praised the film not just because they liked the film themselves but that they could show it to relatives and friends as a way to draw them into the world f Japanese art and culture as the film would make it more accessible to them. They cited the non traditional approach that </span><i style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: x-large;">Tokyo Journey</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> takes.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG3jjRaGZOSBpNhlyLtlHFxZl5t0qH_Ocfh4u6hNy1Eh9HefSsm3o2R_Mw_16zU9HUvVD3G0Toco_fMthd-IqCwzOqMJJtMdiziaolV5G3LHOJ4kbyVgG2yMHupxyWgkWFwcRZr2TSue9S/s1600/image2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG3jjRaGZOSBpNhlyLtlHFxZl5t0qH_Ocfh4u6hNy1Eh9HefSsm3o2R_Mw_16zU9HUvVD3G0Toco_fMthd-IqCwzOqMJJtMdiziaolV5G3LHOJ4kbyVgG2yMHupxyWgkWFwcRZr2TSue9S/s640/image2.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photograph by Regina Tukaeva</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LCGU03ml4d1bJbnGEKIJDI7pAjkKv4KrH_CCZpgbHASZLlk5bs3u2jh8jV8O6hE1HXkGhVSHpq05CL7mY1mjxiZbTnZ5MNC4RqV2lM3wkJ3cbDSNLRcDqx7QlnG1D8WEnHTOAiT_YZq3/s1600/image3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8LCGU03ml4d1bJbnGEKIJDI7pAjkKv4KrH_CCZpgbHASZLlk5bs3u2jh8jV8O6hE1HXkGhVSHpq05CL7mY1mjxiZbTnZ5MNC4RqV2lM3wkJ3cbDSNLRcDqx7QlnG1D8WEnHTOAiT_YZq3/s640/image3.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photograph by Regina Tukaeva</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_byXsHZLax7QJLy95u0k7GCP0mKzeHX25_BkNW6xdyM8NYx9utqo1l1_Uml9Yff51LEL32wam5XcI9BxcYDwzt6-J8CUmxFdILUKPetIyL5gIPauIF3DBONgF1V9TfoPcR7qDlr0Pk27g/s1600/image5.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_byXsHZLax7QJLy95u0k7GCP0mKzeHX25_BkNW6xdyM8NYx9utqo1l1_Uml9Yff51LEL32wam5XcI9BxcYDwzt6-J8CUmxFdILUKPetIyL5gIPauIF3DBONgF1V9TfoPcR7qDlr0Pk27g/s640/image5.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photograph by Regina Tukaeva</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One of the highlights of the presentation was at the end of the film. I cut a new version so that the music continued after the film was finished. The auditorium remained in complete darkness as the music continued. A shadowy figure was ushered onto the stage indistinguishable from the darkness. Within a few seconds I switched on the twin spotlights in the auditorium to reveal the figure in red as if it had stepped down from the screen onto the stage. It was a powerful moment which design electrified the audience as they had no expectation of what was about to happen. The scene was suddenly transformed from a film to a piece of performance art. On this occasion the costume and theatre designer and designer of this costume, <a href="http://elenabasova.ru/theatre/" target="_blank">Elena Basova</a>, also on this occasion took on the role of the figure in red. The photographs taken by Regina Tukaeva gives an idea of the effect produced.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The figure in red plays a special role in the film. How did it come about. Firstly it is worth explaining some of the background to the decision to use the costumed figure. When I was I child I was taken to a children's theatre along with a group of other children. One of the acts was an actor dressed in a normal suit but also dressed in another costume on top of the suit like an octopus with tentacles and with lights attached to the ends of the tentacles. The actor danced around screeching something and if my memory serves me well, he was supposed to be some kind of alien from another planet. At six years old I did not understand the difference between real life and theatre. I was terrified by this apparition and sat in horror in the darkness while all the other children laughed and seemed to understand what was going on . Even when we left the theatre and sat in the cafe with our parents, I could hardly speak with shock. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Many, many years later I am sitting in a small dark theatre in Moscow. As part of the show several figures emerge into the auditorium passing among the spectators. A figure in a sweeping red costume and white pale mask - like a mask from Japanese Noh theatre approaches me, coming right up to my face, the empty eyes and sterile mask seem to look right through me and beyond as if I am transparent and I am gripped by the same fear as I once experienced in that theatre as a child so long ago, although this time I understand the difference between theatre and real life, or I think I do. The figure in red passes me by to haunt another spectator behind me but the fear and coldness remain, my emotions tingling with a indeterminate sensation.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still from the film "Tokyo Journey"</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I never forgot the experience and upon our return from long sojourn in Tokyo I resolved to use the image in a short film about Tokyo.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Tokyo is one of the most contemporary cities in the world - anybody who has spent time there can testify to this but it is more. The buildings are ultra modern like 3D ciphers. At night they glare like neon hieroglyphs glaring from the facades of the glass and LED screens, sending messages across the night sky turning night into day. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">Noh dramas give a whiff of this other world and how it can creep up on you. Usually the waki, an itinerant monk, old man or traveler meets a local person whom he questions about the history of the area. As the conversation continues and the waki draws out the shite’s story it gradually becomes clear that the shite is the ghost of a historical figure who is still clinging to this world either through desire for revenge or anger,or a desire for love. The ghost often asks the waki to pray for them to be released so they can be reborn in the Amida Buddha’s western paradise.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">The swirling neon dream world of Tokyo with its episodic visual context opposed to the spatial coordinates that we are normally used to in most cities, disrupt the senses which feast on the abundance of light which subvert structure and the visual plane. In fact such categories have no meaning in night time Tokyo. The city-scape of Tokyo is a text-scape an anti landscape. The city, a symbol which stands for something but also has its own intrinsic meaning- an hieroglyph.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">We live in the age of light and nowhere is light, luminosity, a feature of the urban landscape as it is in Tokyo – it flows around and through the city like a liquid radiance. The Quintessential city of light its neon landscape casts a luminous dome across the night sky turning dark night into a phosphorescent panorama. This urban phenomena of the night is reminds us of the ancients of Japan who feared the darkness and longed for the dawn, for the comfort of clear light, for the sun goddess Amaterasu to remain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">The film <i>Tokyo Journey</i> forms a journey through the streets and known regions of Tokyo revealing anomalies which occur at boundaries which separate the apparent from the real and the interface between the sentient world and a seemingly hidden non sentient world</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">Its a phenomenon which occurs everywhere in Japanese literature. Murakami in <a href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiyxbON7-TRAhWGiywKHWHOBoUQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FKafka_on_the_Shore&usg=AFQjCNF8WAptEm4ewYCziE5fGv_aoHAl6Q&sig2=rKb52trIhiXCRANlzGxg-Q&bvm=bv.145822982,d.bGg"><i>Kafka on the Shore</i> </a>explains that <i><a href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwj7t8Oa7-TRAhXIGCwKHeAdBcAQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Tale_of_Genji&usg=AFQjCNH8f-cH1GzvBHqx7FC0LtkJITSjCA&sig2=BM7o0eLg-CLUnnntzNKqcQ&bvm=bv.145822982,d.bGg">The Tale of the Genji</a></i> is filled with living spirits which could sometimes travel through space often unbeknownst to themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">The world of the grotesque is the darkness inside us, what could be called our subconscious which was obvious to people at that time and gave a focus for their fears. Until the invention of electric light the world was in darkness, the physical darkness and the darkness of our souls were mixed together with no boundary between them. In their past living spirits of literature such as Ueda Akinari who wrote “<i><a href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwin4Mnt7uTRAhUsCZoKHfEjB_YQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FUgetsu_Monogatari&usg=AFQjCNEnFJMcAd-QrhM1Vfq-MiZaYTtHvw&sig2=ZrNxbdA19ENScJbCpTa8kA&bvm=bv.145822982,d.bGs">Tales of Darkness and Moonlight</a></i>” living spirits were both a grotesque phenomenon and a natural condition of the human heart and people of that time were unable to conceive of these two things as being separate. However the darkness in the outside world has vanished but the darkness in our heart remains just as before. It remains sunken in our subconscious and as Murakami points out that estrangement can create a deep contradiction or confusion inside us.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">The literary and artistic context is what interests us here not whether spirits exist or don't exist. We have already touched on Noh drama and its use of a spirit to tell a story. The spirit is merely a device for taking the reader into a spiritual realm which is neither the everyday world or the world of superstitions but is a realm of knowledge which might be related to some kind of archetypal substrata of human experience which might be termed aesthetic or poetic.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;">There are parallels in western literature: for instance Dante in the Inferno meets Virgil in the forest who seems to beckon to him. Dante asks whether Virgil is human or a shadow. Virgil answers that he was once human and from this point he takes Dante on his journey though the inferno and purgatory and finally to paradise. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ghost in Hamlet - Russian film version 1964</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif;">Hamlet confronts the ghost of his Father, the ghost in fact could be considered the main character in Hamlet as without him there is no play, Hamlet would never have been able to understand what was going on or what had happened if the ghost had not revealed it to him and changes everything including Hamlet's consciousness. Hamlet only confirms the secret knowledge through a piece of theatre in which, using the traveling players, he reveals that which cannot be seen or accessed by the senses, that about which he has only an hypothesis formed by a message from a spirit. This kind of knowledge cannot be confirmed with facts but through a theatrical device Hamlet reveals a truth which turns the world upside down for him and for us. Hamlet begins to explore the darker parameters of his own and others consciousness and at times gets lost in his own manipulations. It is the ghosts appearance at the beginning which holds things together and to which we return for reference and hovers always in the background, haunting the play. In fact we might think that the ghost is manipulating Hamlet. In the Russian film version this is hinted at when Hamlet stalks the ghost before confronting it. This stalking is repeated in the scene where the traveling players re-enact the murder of the King. Hamlet "stalks" the reactions of his uncle and Mother.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif;">To further relate </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: large;">this idea to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWFjdnYFuLc">Tokyo Journey</a>, the ghost in Hamlet appears in full armour,(certainly in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va0RGojXf8I&t=3827s">Russian film version </a>of 1964) which contains a guise which is both familiar</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: large;"> and distancing. Inside the armour we know is an actor a human being. The armour is a mask which draws us in but also distances. Similarly, the costume and mask in Tokyo Journey contains an actor but distances us from reality, so that the borders are blurred between reality and fantasy. The mask alerts us to the fact that the visual surface of what we see in Tokyo, or any other city, hides other layers - historical, cultural and social - that the beauty or ugliness of Tokyo is not the only question we should be asking ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Many thanks to <b>Regina Tukaeva</b> for permission to use photographs from the screening.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Information about Elena Basova's "Театр Потеряного Времена" (Theatre of Lost Time) can be found <a href="http://elenabasova.ru/" target="_blank">here</a></i></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-40486224357526269232017-01-27T09:52:00.000-08:002017-01-28T04:02:31.838-08:00Music, Blok, Gogol and "The Tempest"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In an article by James David Jacobs about Shakespeare and music he writes</div>
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<em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">"The Tempest stands at the crossroads of theatrical history: between the Renaissance and the Baroque, between the Elizabethan theatre of the imagination and the Jacobean spectacle, between the primacy of the word and the primacy of sensory entertainment".</em></div>
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Similarly The Fairground Booth was written and performed at the threshold of a new epoch in 1906 in Russia.</div>
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The common link between these plays is music. It's no coincidence that at the same time these upheavals were taking place in England, the art form known as opera was being born in Italy (the first operatic masterpiece, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, was premiered in 1607.) And it is not an accident that <a data-mce-href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com" href="http://www.thefairgroundbooth.com/" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">The Fairground Booth</a> appeared at the junction between two epochs and the beginning of what we understand as the modern era.<br />
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One of the most remarkable aspects of <a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">The Tempest</a> is how aware it is of its own historical position, how consciously Shakespeare bids farewell to past trends and welcomes new ones, reinventing himself even at the end of his career. This is particularly evident in his use of music and sound cues, which are integrated into the text in an unprecedented way.</div>
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There are many places where the music takes over, and whole scenes are performed in mime and dance, or, most remarkably, with the characters themselves just standing there listening to the music along with the audience.</div>
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Many of the settings of Romeo and Juliet, for example, could just as easily refer to the older tragic love stories Shakespeare himself drew on when writing that play. James David Jacobs continues "But The Tempest is truly a world Shakespeare himself created, and it is no coincidence that it is the least dated of Shakespeare’s plays, the one that requires the least translation for a modern audience".</div>
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"<em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">And one of the main reasons for this is that it is the play in which he puts the most trust in the power of music</em>". It is on this point that I must disagree. Shakespeare was much indebted to the <a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">commedia dell'arte</a> even to the point of using the enchanted island motif, a long time element of the commedia dell'arte. It is the musicality of the play and its improvisory quality which allows Shakespeare to freely explore themes which appear timeless.</div>
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In the course of writing about Blok and in particular the musicality of The Fairground Booth many new aspects of the play have come to the surface. <a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiesIvtmq_OAhWrPZoKHfANClUQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAndrei_Bely&usg=AFQjCNGwQksF3dlM3wCkKFFAAaymNDbMNg&sig2=n10T-hj-mwuRc9sNl4UFfg&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiesIvtmq_OAhWrPZoKHfANClUQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAndrei_Bely&usg=AFQjCNGwQksF3dlM3wCkKFFAAaymNDbMNg&sig2=n10T-hj-mwuRc9sNl4UFfg&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">Andrey Bely</a> in his book about <a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwju78DXmq_OAhWjZpoKHXT-CdsQFghAMAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNikolai_Gogol&usg=AFQjCNHrrNCJ9hLUd6ZEs1b8a8-8v3mUzQ&sig2=ZHrR1JH4MwP2ejbm3cnIPQ&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwju78DXmq_OAhWjZpoKHXT-CdsQFghAMAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNikolai_Gogol&usg=AFQjCNHrrNCJ9hLUd6ZEs1b8a8-8v3mUzQ&sig2=ZHrR1JH4MwP2ejbm3cnIPQ&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">Gogol</a> "Gogols Masterstvo (Artistry)" talks about rhythm in Gogol's writing in particular about the idea of a story/song in literature. He maintains that there is no one work of Gogol which does not contain a musical principle and if we take heed of this then it opens up a whole depth of the social tendency in Gogol's work nonetheless in a latent condition. Exploring Gogol may seem like a digression but it was with Gogol's The Government Inspector that Meyerhold brought to fruition the lessons and techniques he had developed through his collaboration with Blok in The Fairground Booth. The Government inspector pointed the way to a new theatre in Russia something which both Blok and <a data-mce-href="http://www.meyerholdfilm.blogspot.com" href="http://www.meyerholdfilm.blogspot.com/" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Meyerhold</a> wanted to achieve.</div>
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The soul of music - is a naive, realistic interpretation of a subject and is displayed not only in Gogol's unsuccessful tales. Bely points out that the key to the interpretation of Gogol's is buried in the musicality of his writing- the music of the composition. - "listening to music it is as if the soul possesses one wish only - to explode". In the tone and rhythm and the rise and fall of sounds is encapsulated a whole way of life. For Bely one cannot easily call it rhythm but for sure it is an echo and such rhythm would never enter the head of a poet with a pen in their hand. In this is the unseen riches of sounds of the early work of Gogol, maintains Bely which speaks of everything.</div>
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But what relevance does this have in the context of a discussion of The Fairground Booth and The Tempest. Gogol was the first Russian author to explicitly embark on such an abstract and non literary, non textual approach to writing, literature and creating meaning outside of the text. It is no accident that Meyerhold shunned the historically accurate and classic approach to the play Government Inspector and turned it into a masterpiece of almost Avant-garde dimensions. Meyerhold's Government Inspector was a direct and unreserved descendant of The Fairground Booth which will be discussed in the next section of this book. Rhythm and movement was everything for Meyerhold and it might be fair to say that he unlocked the unrevealed treasures of Gogol's play which the author had himself perhaps intended but the acting style and understanding of theatre did not at that time exist to unlock the full scope of its satirical possibilities. In his book about Meyerhold, Edward Braun quotes from Emanuel Kaplan's book "Meetings with Meyerhold" who describes the moment when it is announced that the Government Inspector is arriving soon and which illustrates Meyerhold's "orchestration" of Gogol's "score".</div>
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<em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">"Then suddenly, as though on a word of command, at the stroke of a conductors baton, everyone stirs into agitation, pipes jumps from lips, fists clench, heads swivel. The last syllable of Revisior (<a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi-gJeRnK_OAhUEBSwKHWj4DCcQtwIIJzAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dmi5FrLIG6Mk&usg=AFQjCNFiRMzE180bZEaNWk6zO5dqvT8fKg&sig2=WnxNLVqa1vqGGvDAsxBbMQ&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi-gJeRnK_OAhUEBSwKHWj4DCcQtwIIJzAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dmi5FrLIG6Mk&usg=AFQjCNFiRMzE180bZEaNWk6zO5dqvT8fKg&sig2=WnxNLVqa1vqGGvDAsxBbMQ&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGs" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">The Government Inspector</a>) seems to tweak everybody. Now the word is hissed in a whisper, the whole word by some.....The word Revisior is divided musically into every conceivable intonation....blows up and dies away like a squall".</em></div>
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The additional information given to the audience in this episode is imparted musically and does not depend on the written words in the play. When Kaplan talks about a squall it is not a tempest as such but it is close enough for our purposes to understand that Gogol had come up with something new and Meyerhold had unearthed it but it had taken almost a whole century for the theatrical world (certainly in Russia) to catch up with Gogol. Information is not given in just what is said but is part of an energy which like electricity is passed through a conductor and is charged with a new energy it is transformed from something raw into something concentrated and reconstructed.</div>
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The play becomes an instrument, an accumulator of an energy which is transformed into another instrument and sound and rhythm is what issues from this instrument. As Bely points out, the influence of an author becomes loaded with images which depend on their possibility or capability to be modified or metamorphosed: In the consciousness of an epoch the author is defined twice over - as part of a collective which makes a certain demand and the collective itself accepting the authors proposal to cooperate with him in his own epoch and reach across time.</div>
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<img class="mce-object mce-object-iframe" data-mce-object="iframe" data-mce-p-allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" data-mce-p-frameborder="0" data-mce-p-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qSuhgGYVT_0" height="315" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" style="background: url("img/object.gif") center center no-repeat rgb(213, 213, 213); border: 1px dotted rgb(58, 58, 58); line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px;" width="420" /></div>
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The similarities between Blok's world and Gogol's world are manifest. Gogol is full of sudden arrivals and disappearances and this is no less evident in the Inspector General which is reflected in the tragic carnival of The Fairground Booth. Harlequin's leap through the window at the end of the pay could be compared Khlestnikov's escape into nowhere in The Inspector General. The metaphysical space opened numerous possibilities to Meyerhold for his later work.</div>
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This becomes immediately apparent in Meyerhold's The Government Inspector but the seeds for the Government Inspector were sown in his collaboration with Blok in the Fairground Booth. The Fairground Booth was an accumulator of theatrical energy which drew from the past and present to point the way to the future. All of Meyerhold's and not just Meyerhold but other directors like <a data-mce-href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com" href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com/" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Vakhtangov</a> ,Tairov, Eisenstein and Mayakovsky were directly influenced by Blok's play. We will come to the inheritance of The Fairground Booth and its vast imprint on the history of Russian Theatre as well as Opera later but for now the hints given by Andrei Bely point to a common undercurrent in both the Fairground Booth and The Tempest and why the Tempest was so important to Blok. Lying below the surface of both plays a "full fathom five" is metamorphosis - a "sea change" in what was understood to be theatre. For Shakespeare The Tempest coincided with a new epoch of exploration across continents which ushered in a new consciousness of what it meant to be human a specifically capitalistic consciousness for Blok the mechanisation of life demanded that humanity begin a a new journey and this would be reflected in theatre. In Shakespeare's Tempest, The pearls that were his eyes are the same empty eyes reflecting out from Columbina's white face, a "mirrored emptiness" and both images reflect the wreckage of one epoch and the beginning of another. It is no accident that one of the central metaphors of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland which draws heavily from The Tempest was also used to illustrate the division between one epoch and another.</div>
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The musicality of the play is like the masks of the commedia dell'arte which also convey additional information visually,independently of the text. In the commedia certain information could still be derived from the costumes and clothing of the actors. Audiences knew what members of the various social classes typically wore, and also expected certain colours to represent certain emotional states. Regardless of where they toured, commedia dell'arte conventions were recognized and adhered to.</div>
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The Fairground carnival atmosphere of Blok's play recalls the Petrushka perfomances. Like many branches of popular theatre Petrushka made simultaneous use of of resources which modern western high theatre more often than not kept separated. Petruska could be a drama pageant and musical all in one take. According to Catriona Kelly in her book "Petrushka", usually the Petrushka was preceded by music on a barrel organ and cymbal's were used to mark the hero's entrance and other dramatic moments. More importantly from the point of view of our discussion, during the play the hero would talk against the barrel organ music and this meant that although the text was spoken it observed and coincided with music patterns and rhythm, as Kelly observes it could sound like dub poetry or rap. This would not have been and could not have been lost on Blok who as a poet would have been acutely aware of the rhythmic possibilities of the spoken word and images.</div>
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Later Pierrot speaks, his voice is like the first peal of a bell. When he recounts how he and Harlequin mock Columbine when she falls as a cardboard doll into the snow filled ground, the snow falls like silver droplets. One can almost hear the soft muted ringing of the swirling snow like a mass of atomised liquid, metamorphosed into particles of sound, crystal atoms of swirling sound. There is the sound of Harlequin laughing, accompanied by the tinkling of (sleigh) bells and witnessing all of this Pierrot laughs with delight. Incidentally we have already spoken how Poe was an influence on Blok and Meyerhold and the Fairground Booth and once again the scene recalls the bells of the victim of Poe's hero from "The Case of Amontillado" which adds a macabre brushstroke to the scene - but of a tragic comic tone.</div>
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The whole of this scene has a silver musicality and rhythm - The speech itself reads and sounds like musical accompaniment to itself, to the text and words themselves. This occurs in Shakespeare in the sense of the musicality of speech almost independent of the meaning of the words, creating a new meaning a double meaning and kind of accompaniment, not as background however, creating new layers of meaning and understanding, a separate philological context without words but which speak of things and emotions difficult to express in words alone. In this is the real greatness of theatre to conjure images and emotion from out of nowhere and from nothing so to speak and yet establish a presence which gives such images a reality and being, with gestures and the theatrical poetic of sound and gesture. It is this capacity which Blok and Meyerhold revealed the theatrical possibilities of theatre itself by returning to a theatre of the past and in so doing unmasking its potential and depth.</div>
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And so we return to <em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">The Tempest</em></div>
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Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,<br />
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.<br />
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments<br />
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,<br />
That if I then wak’d after long sleep,<br />
Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming,<br />
The clouds methought would open, and show riches<br />
Ready to drop upon me, that when I wak’d<br />
I cried to dream again.<br />
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Shakespeare's text, especially in the Tempest which is the most musical of Shakespeare's plays, is like the "<em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">sound and rhythm which hums about our ears - and sometimes voices</em>" - The text does not convey the content of the world as we see it and it conveys something more than is contained in the words and structure of the sentences and this is common to The Fairground Booth and The Tempest. This idea was a new departure for theatre at the time and it gave Meyerhold the opportunity to explore new approaches and possibilities in theatre. That is that meaning could come from something other than the text or words written on paper. something similar had already happened with Chekhov where the pauses and the gaps in the text where as important as the text itself leaving space for actors pauses gestures and looks.</div>
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<a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjswPHzn6_OAhWE_iwKHa76BpAQFggdMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCamille_Saint-Sa%25C3%25ABns&usg=AFQjCNEIQK5Jd-1444AcpQR5SYw3UiDmxw&sig2=yGyZUGs6ucYHYlVYW_fPBg" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjswPHzn6_OAhWE_iwKHa76BpAQFggdMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCamille_Saint-Sa%25C3%25ABns&usg=AFQjCNEIQK5Jd-1444AcpQR5SYw3UiDmxw&sig2=yGyZUGs6ucYHYlVYW_fPBg" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">Saint-Saens</a> writes: <em style="border: none; line-height: 1.5;">Music begins where the words ends; it expresses the unutterable......The point is that at certain moments music becomes speech it expresses anything;the text becomes secondary and almost unnecessary.</em></div>
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In relation to theatre this is tantamount to heresy and certainly was so at the time but the sense of musicality in theatre created rhythm and rhythm created movement and movement implies freedom. More importantly this freedom allows a freedom to interrupt and this involves the audience, inviting them to participate directly with what is going on in the performance. They are not spoon fed a text or a message, they have to participate in order to understand what is going on and this involves a level of self understanding of ourselves and the world of being, something which every theatrical practitioner from <a data-mce-href="http://www.stanislavskyfilm.copernicusfilms.com" href="http://www.stanislavskyfilm.copernicusfilms.com/" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Stanislavsky</a>, to <a data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Artaud" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Artaud" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Artuad</a> to <a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiZ6t38na_OAhWEESwKHc6BCP8QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJerzy_Grotowski&usg=AFQjCNH_nENVt-2bHOIL72gjRj3lbJilOg&sig2=xCWfodN5pC0WwSCVCZ3QkA&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiZ6t38na_OAhWEESwKHc6BCP8QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJerzy_Grotowski&usg=AFQjCNH_nENVt-2bHOIL72gjRj3lbJilOg&sig2=xCWfodN5pC0WwSCVCZ3QkA&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Grotowski</a> and <a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjilP2Gnq_OAhVIjSwKHUdKBL4QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPeter_Brook&usg=AFQjCNFQOw7YA_sVwvPNKuZs9YNcfcntUw&sig2=sGQv99Q5t30VBxViAoBplg&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjilP2Gnq_OAhVIjSwKHUdKBL4QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPeter_Brook&usg=AFQjCNFQOw7YA_sVwvPNKuZs9YNcfcntUw&sig2=sGQv99Q5t30VBxViAoBplg&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Brook</a> point to as the essence of theatre and its task. A straight forward narrative text is not enough in this context. This brings us back to the unfinished or open-ended quality of The Fairground Booth. Blok would have been aware of Vruble's work as a painter. Many of his pieces seem incomplete or unfinished and this was a quality that artists applied to their work at the time. Vruble would leave part of the canvas empty or untouched or open. He maintained he did not want to make a direct copy of reality or nature but rather he wanted to establish his relationship or emotional responses to the phenomena. Something similar could be said to be happening to theatre at the time and in particular with Blok's and Meyerhold's intentions of allowing the audiences self understanding to take its course. The point is that in both cases, with <a data-mce-href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiW2Y-knq_OAhWD_iwKHbzgAE0QFggeMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMikhail_Vrubel&usg=AFQjCNGoCWOwWlcX7PbDPb-gqIw0Vbx9Tw&sig2=kcXsrCbt1mtFFwzFQfJt3Q&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiW2Y-knq_OAhWD_iwKHbzgAE0QFggeMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMikhail_Vrubel&usg=AFQjCNGoCWOwWlcX7PbDPb-gqIw0Vbx9Tw&sig2=kcXsrCbt1mtFFwzFQfJt3Q&bvm=bv.129391328,d.bGg" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">Vruble</a> and The Fairground Booth, it is the inner world which is referenced as much as the outer reality. The ability for free interpretation by both the audience (viewer in Vrubles case) and the artist is emphasised.</div>
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The danger is that such a tend can be abused and be dissolved into an abstract hazy experience which can mean anything. However with Blok and Meyerhold and moreover Shakespeare this was not the case.</div>
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Another image is born from sound perhaps indistinct and seemingly formless but it creates an emotion transparent in form a delicate organism and creates a sort of distance sometimes close some times far away, an echo if you like reflected and refracted through time and space.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-66015723984701933782017-01-24T10:59:00.000-08:002017-01-27T10:32:30.986-08:00Tokyo Journey - live presentation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Showing this short film to a live audience tomorrow in Moscow. Never expected to present it as such so a bit nervous how it will be received. Was at the venue today checking things out. Good sound - which is welcome as the soundtrack is important.</span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;"><br /></div></div><div><br /></div></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YWFjdnYFuLc" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The film was shot in Tokyo and since it has been released on You-tube I have re evaluated the film and re edited it slightly for this particular presentation due to the specifics of the presentation. I will blog about that later with pictures and possibly a video clip of the event.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2t3DjFm0qMJS8qW_9-ghyphenhyphenvE5mjJRV6B_ISiyhkS4vHS0amt_K6RsFdKvn91t_5UpoqkFUiPvMH6LdCOr2tdGHz8hUtC9kDye8_LbJuEeLFzItUW6OBFb4JaAMYCPixdU_v8E_NmuOJ8/s1600/cropped-Phosphorescent-Queen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2t3DjFm0qMJS8qW_9-ghyphenhyphenvE5mjJRV6B_ISiyhkS4vHS0amt_K6RsFdKvn91t_5UpoqkFUiPvMH6LdCOr2tdGHz8hUtC9kDye8_LbJuEeLFzItUW6OBFb4JaAMYCPixdU_v8E_NmuOJ8/s320/cropped-Phosphorescent-Queen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have been worrying about it for several weeks now mostly about how I would present the film to the audience but all those problems seem to have been solved. The work that I put into this video is now starting to pay dividends in terms of new projects and ideas for films. All the practical experience on this film portended</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> a completely</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> new direction.</span><br /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Have also been working on much of the writing. The next book about the <a href="http://www.russiantheatrefilmseries.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Russian theatre </a>is in the proof reading stage and the publication date will be announced soon, probably just before the spring of this year.</span><br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-32242067906916795382017-01-20T04:33:00.000-08:002017-01-27T10:32:31.019-08:00Encounters with the Russian Avant-garde<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">"Encounters with the Russian Avant-garde" is a book by Michael Craig which complements the series of six films made by Michael Craig and Copernicus Films about the Russian Avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s. </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Click on link to purchase book: </span><a class="yt-uix-servicelink " data-servicelink="CC8Q6TgYACITCP_1oc_c0NECFUzgGAodHtIMjij4HQ" data-target-new-window="True" data-url="http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc" href="http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc</a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/prZDaZwV6q0" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a class="yt-uix-servicelink " data-servicelink="CC8Q6TgYACITCP_1oc_c0NECFUzgGAodHtIMjij4HQ" data-target-new-window="True" data-url="http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc" href="http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><br /></a></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Fully illustrated including stills from most of the films, it is not only an account or explanation but also an introduction or to be more specific an "encounter" with this exciting phenomenon. The title reflects an active relationship: firstly through the experience of living in Moscow for many years, plus a direct encounter with the buildings, the architecture and the very territory in which much of the avant-garde arose and to some extent still exists. Encounter suggests something more casual, unexpected and unstructured but also a sense of living in the avant-garde and being part of it. After all it was the intention of the Russian Avant-garde to connect with the real lived world and to ‘take art out of the galleries and onto the streets and squares of Moscow'.</span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a class="yt-uix-servicelink " data-servicelink="CC8Q6TgYACITCP_1oc_c0NECFUzgGAodHtIMjij4HQ" data-target-new-window="True" data-url="http://www.copernicusfilms.com" href="http://www.copernicusfilms.com/" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.copernicusfilms.com</a></span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-73348755183793415642017-01-20T03:51:00.000-08:002017-01-27T10:32:31.039-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h2 class="entry-title" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/dostoevsky-and-the-fairground-booth/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Permalink to Dostoevsky and The Fairground Booth">Dostoevsky and The Fairground Booth</a></h2><div class="entry-meta" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 120%; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <a href="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/dostoevsky-and-the-fairground-booth/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #888888; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="11:13 am"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">October 13, 2016</span></a> <span class="meta-sep" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by</span> <span class="author vcard" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/author/michaelcraig/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #888888; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts by michaelcraig">michaelcraig</a></span></div><div class="entry-content" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; margin: 0px; padding: 12px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="fairground Booth" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-835" src="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/fairground-Booth.jpg" height="128" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; margin: 0px auto 12px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="640" /></div><div style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Planning an extra chapter about Dostoevsky and the Fairground Booth in the book <b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Blok, Meyerhold and the Fairground Booth</b> <a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" dir="ltr" href="http://thefairgroundbooth.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">thefairgroundbooth.com</a>. Its come about due to further research into the symbolist painters of the time who were involved with theatre set design and theatre in general in Russia and Europe: Benois, Somov,Golovin and more particularly Dobuzhinsky. He designed sets for <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Devil’s Play,</i> and an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Devils</i>. Dobuzhinsky also designed the frontispiece for Blok and Meyerhold’s play <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Fairground Booth.</i></span></div><div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_1105" style="background: rgb(241, 241, 241); border: 0px; clear: both; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px auto 20px; max-width: 632px !important; padding: 4px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1976px;"><img alt="Dobuzhinsky's illustration for the set of "The Devil's Play"" class="size-full wp-image-1105" src="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/scan0029.jpg" height="329" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; height: auto; margin: 5px 5px 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="400" /><br /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #888888; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px 5px 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dobuzhinsky’s illustration for the set of “The Devil’s Play”</div></div><div style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">This chapter and section will give an extra depth to the discussion about The Fairground Booth. It will also serve one of my intention which is to put the play in the wider context of Russian and European literature.</span></div><div style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: large;">Attached are the frontispiece for <i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Fairground Booth</i> and the set design for the fist part of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Devils Play</em> by Remizov</span><br /><span class="proflinkWrapper" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: large; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="proflinkPrefix" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">+</span><a class="proflink aaTEdf" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/113718909947503936935" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Russian Theatre Documentary Series</a></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" dir="ltr" href="http://thefairgroundbooth.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">thefairgroundbooth.com</a> <a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" dir="ltr" href="http://michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com</a></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><a class="ot-hashtag aaTEdf" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23Dobuzhensky" rel="nofollow" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#Dobuzhinsky</a> <a class="ot-hashtag aaTEdf" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23thefairgroundbooth" rel="nofollow" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#thefairgroundbooth</a></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-25985751165398761472017-01-20T02:50:00.000-08:002017-01-27T10:32:31.065-08:00"The Fairground Booth" and "Petrushka"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div style="clear: left; color: #444444; float: left; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtCg7HD_17czLA8kdFi5DVHc6wWrCbrZZj5buYcKLwbhI3jYSY3IVjTUYpfm1Vmq5t4hy6GBcPZXZUU5yXHxQKXyDEgCViRHBzyxh8ovtRpqDtIFXXwbuAF0zhZy-AoKvNpVqpQAQ87ig/s1600/the-kiss-19161.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtCg7HD_17czLA8kdFi5DVHc6wWrCbrZZj5buYcKLwbhI3jYSY3IVjTUYpfm1Vmq5t4hy6GBcPZXZUU5yXHxQKXyDEgCViRHBzyxh8ovtRpqDtIFXXwbuAF0zhZy-AoKvNpVqpQAQ87ig/s320/the-kiss-19161.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>This post is a fragment from a chapter of the book which will be published some time next year. The context is a comparison between the ballet "Petrushka" and "The Fairground Booth". Both share roots in the Russian fairground and the figures of the commedia dell'arte. To understand a play like The Fairground Booth which has no plot, no characters, no real sense of forward movement or natural time and broke from the traditions of realism and naturalism, requires an approach to Russian culture which moves beyond its surface reflections. When, as Bakhtin states, Dostoevsky's work embodies elements of carnival, (something which is not immediately associated with Dostoevsky), then it becomes clear why it is possible to find clues to the meaning of "The Fairground Booth" in works of literature as various as "The Brothers Karamazov" and The ballet "Petrushka" and vise a versa.<br /><a name='more'></a></div><br /><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">For those seeking unadulterated cultural forms this approach may be disappointing. However it is in this spirit, if we understand the play itself as a mask, that "The Fairground Booth" will reveal itself. The essence of this play is that it embraced contraries and opposites and did so deliberately in order to open up theatre to some kind of change or reconstitution, something which was desperately needed in theatre at the time and was pursued by Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and Vakhtangov each in there own fashion. New modes of thought born of a new age called for new modes of expression. But where to find these new myths and new forms. Blok turned to the tradition of the fairground with its timeless puppets and the Italian comeddia dell'arte with its eternal masks and together with Meyerhold they forged the beginnings of a new theatre.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NdRQ5Kc03PcJ2rJ-VgQzX86DLoiWKkn12YqUV705zZznAsGnUX2Y3qqbqleAgkMnFzbP97d8Qijuj4LpGbsF080OhbVlODzYcW2Qg4wtMF5l9qZ8_mT8bWpibjE5RC4PLvMOmmFAZ-8/s1600/%25D0%2591%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7-%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B8%25D1%258F-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NdRQ5Kc03PcJ2rJ-VgQzX86DLoiWKkn12YqUV705zZznAsGnUX2Y3qqbqleAgkMnFzbP97d8Qijuj4LpGbsF080OhbVlODzYcW2Qg4wtMF5l9qZ8_mT8bWpibjE5RC4PLvMOmmFAZ-8/s1600/%25D0%2591%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7-%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B8%25D1%258F-1.jpg" /></a></div>The examination of the ballet "Petrushka" has led us to a wider contemplation of the Fairground Booth itself. We can go a little further and examine some of the paintings and works of the artists of The World of Art movement with Benois as one of its leading figures and the author of the libretto of "Petrushka" in relation to "The Fairground Booth" in which the figure of Pierrot and the Russian version Petrushka are on some levels interchangeable. There is a painting which caught my eye partly for its apocalyptic character by Dobuzhinsky called "The Kiss". It shows a couple embracing against a futuristic apocalyptic background, a city-scape shrouded in mist and smoke and self combustion. It is strangely alluring and threatening all in one glance. The naked couple is reminiscent of Rodin's "The Lovers" but more in keeping with Klimt's "The Kiss". It is not immediately connected with carnival until we look a little further.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XKllB_sZPTeQiw44_B5s_KepnNLwsdemQUhm2Og3ZEFTbxbWt3QrtqIiCvU4vwyuDr2wYOZl7Gg4OpRQOH_VhYNheurHfqATNr_brTV_yxXspXb2O4bdQfaEjN6peNjQNFCuF6in9WE/s1600/%25D0%2591%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7-%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B8%25D1%258F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XKllB_sZPTeQiw44_B5s_KepnNLwsdemQUhm2Og3ZEFTbxbWt3QrtqIiCvU4vwyuDr2wYOZl7Gg4OpRQOH_VhYNheurHfqATNr_brTV_yxXspXb2O4bdQfaEjN6peNjQNFCuF6in9WE/s1600/%25D0%2591%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7-%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B8%25D1%258F.jpg" /></a></div>Such images crop up in many paintings by members of The world of Art movement and are connected with the themes of the fairground and the comeddia dell'arte. For instance there is a painting by Konstantine Somov called "Death and Harlequin" 1907, which shows a skeleton dressed in a sable cape with what looks like silver teardrops sewn into it. Harlequin thumbs his nose at Death, the female skeleton figure, (much like Petrushka thumbs his nose at the magician at the end of the ballet after he has been killed by the Moor and reappears as a ghost). In the middle distance behind Death and Harlequin is a couple dressed in contemporary evening wear, kissing passionately. Its not a great looking work of art in the style of Rembrandt for instance using richly variegated paint surfaces and is more in the decorative ornamental style which was so popular at that time then and related to The world of Art's involvement in theatre. The scene is repeated in various guises in other paintings by Somov especially a colour sketch for a theatre curtain for The Free Theatre in Moscow in 1913. In this sketch all the elements of the commedia dell'arte are present, The devil, harlequin, Pierrot, a young woman to the side in a pose of melancholic meditation and in the centre a man and a woman trying to reach out to each other but are separated by the break in the curtain. This separation reminded me of the author in "The Fairground Booth" (who in this sketch appears perhaps in the guise of a bald bespectacled man, the only figure not in a mask) who trying to bring together Columbina and Pierrot but are separated by the set of the theatre flying away before they can renew their relationship and join together. Above the whole scene cupids and figures from Greek mythology languish in the clouds above. These coincidences are further underlined by one curious fact which is common to many of these paintings. The theme of unobtainable desire. Many times there is a couple who is estranged and alienated from one another. Something is wrong or amiss despite the merriment of the carnival and despite the passion surrounding the kiss . In all the paintings depicting carnival and the harlequinades there is an underlying disquiet or even violence, as in "Columbina's Tongue" 1915 where Pierrot is threatened with a stick by a Harlequin like figure, who is poking out from behind the giant skirts of an over-sized Columbina dominating the entire canvas. The passion is called into question by for instance in Somov's Death and Harlequin by the appearance of Death in the foreground. With Dobuzhinsky's version the towering city of chimneys belching steam and the overwhelming skyscrapers leaning at odd impossible angles and the old symbols of the city are being engulfed in flames, angels are falling ( the angel on top of the column in St Petersburg on Palace Square). The white skyscrapers (white being the colour of the apocalypse) seems to be growing out of the destruction.Here an odd conjunction occurs which has been touched on earlier and Dobuzhinsky's painting embodies this connection.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">It has been argued that in his version of "The Kiss" Klimt represented the moment Apollo kisses Daphne, following the metamorphosis of Ovid's narrative. I don't know if this is the case or not but if we follow this logic then it can illuminate further some of the themes that have been explored earlier. Here the myth of the metamorphosis of a human being into a tree reoccurs.<br />In the metamorphoses of Ovid</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">Daphne the daughter of the river god<br />Peneus was the first love of Apollo;<br />this happened not by chance<br />but by the cruel outrage of cupid.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">After an argument with Phoebus (Apollo), cupid shot two different arrows at cross purposes with one another. One arrow struck struck Daphne and the other Apollo. One was in love and the other would have none of it. Apollo pursues Daphne from an excess of passion and Daphne flees across the the land eventually appealing to her father to protect her. Scarcely has she finished her prayer and she is transformed into a tree for her own protection. Apollo even despite such a metamorphosis presses his lips to the wood with the warmth of his passion still aglow.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">Apollo doesn't give up stating:<br />Although you cannot be my bride<br />you will assuredly be my own tree<br />O laurel, and will always find yourself<br />girding my locks, my lyre and my quiver too...<br />you will adorn great roman generals....<br />so you will be evergreen forever...</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">The first thing that strikes one here is the idea of an unobtainable love which is present as a motive in the legend of Narcissus and Echo in "The Fairground Booth", Echo and Narcissus in their different ways, yearned for the unobtainable. It is also featured in the love scenes of the three couples in the play as well as Pierrot's final estrangement from Columbina and is present in paintings and art from the The world of Art movement. Somov was homosexual as were several members of The World of Art movement and the idea at that time of unobtainable desire must have been particularly problematic but rich in material for him as an artist. For the lovers in Dobuzhinsky's painting however there is a difference. While they are being engulfed in the destruction they somehow stand out from it, surviving in a fiery embrace, seemingly oblivious to the tempest around them. In another painting by Somov, Italian Comedy he depicts a carnival of masks with harlequin, Columbina and Pierrot. Above them almost unnoticed is a wall of arches with one of the column of the arches appearing as if it is about to metamorphosis into a demon monster ready to devour the merrymaking mask below.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">It is worth recapitulating what has been said earlier with regard to the story of Attis and Blok's interest Cattulus's poem abut Attis and Cybele who changed Attis into a Pine tree, which henceforth became sacred. Attis gradually becomes and acts as a female. Then again Attis (in my opinion) appears as Ariel in "The Tempest" who was preserved in a pine tree on the island and is released from his suffering by Prospero. These themes, especially those which spoke of metamorphosis and transformation were a constant preoccupation with Russian artists and writers of the early twentieth century, delving into classical antiquity to illuminate their concerns with the present and future. Sometimes they are so hidden that one could be forgiven for seeing things where they do not exist. However, as always art always invites speculation. In one painting called "The Resting Comedians" 1914 by Sergei Sudeikin who as well as being an artist was also a theatre designer and at one time worked with Meyerhold in arranging the theatre House of Interludes (1910-1911. His art included many scenes taken directly from the fairground and harlequinades. Here the scene shows a group of travelling players resting in a forest glade by a lake. On the right hand-side is a figure which could be human or could be a mannequin - half puppet, half human but either way it is embedded into the tree almost as part of the tree and in its mouth there looks to be what I can only describe as a pine cone. Metamorphosis for symbolists was the essence of creativity as has been stated elsewhere and so it is not inconceivable that this small detail referencing a human being transformed into a tree is deliberate.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">So why one might ask should we concern ourselves with paintings and graphic works from this time in relation to "The Fairground Booth". The obvious answer is that many artists especially from The World of Art movement actively participated in theatrical design and production. However there is a deeper, more direct reason. "The Fairground Booth" presents us with an ornamental world not a real world and this was a conscious attempt to subvert realism and the naturalism of theatrical practice and develop new dramas and new theatrical forms. Part of this process was questioning the foundations of theatre itself. The Fairground Booth's other title was "The Puppet Show" (from the puppet booths of the Russian fairground) and in both the play "The Fairground Booth" and the Ballet "Petrushka" the scenes resembled a picture gallery where the figures in pictures and drawings from bygone theatre jumped from their frames and became living entities before our eyes. This phenomena is literally performed in the ballet "Petrushka" when the magician brings Petrushka, the Ballerina and the Moor to life with the touch of his flute and they step out of their booths/boxes/frames and dance like any living animated creature. It is a comment on the creative process itself and also raises questions about the self and the view of the actors task as an autonomous free entity. Dance and movement as a component part of the theatrical and dramatic process was a new and fresh approach in theatre.</div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 24px;">We began with the ballet "Petrushka" and in conclusion we return to the theme of dance which permeates all these works from "The Fairground Booth" to "Petrushka" and to those works which feature in one form or another carnival motifs. In this context we can highlight what can be called the Dance of Death, stalking the epoch before the Revolution and the first world war and which haunted the cultural milieu of Europe. It also appeared in its symbolist manifestations from Les Fleurs du mal of Baudelaire to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" which is set during an Italian carnival. Poe's plague ridden "The Mask of the Red Death" where Death visits the ball in the guise of a masked stranger comes to mind in this instance as well. For our purposes in explaining and revealing some of the themes which inform "The Fairground Booth" the dance of death is ever present. It is Columbina who appears at the beginning of "The Fairground Booth" as Death. For the mystics she is Death for whom they have been waiting. For Pierrot she is his fiance. This double interpretation paves the way for what is to follow, a series of ambiguous and multifaceted theatrical phenomena and doubling. This enabled Blok simultaneously to tip his hat to his symbolist leanings but also criticise them in this work of self parody, a trend which intensified up to and beyond the Russian revolution but abruptly ended when it was replaced by Social Realism as the dominant artistic movement in Russia in the early 1930s. It also gave Meyerhold a chance to experiment with new forms of theatre which entered the mainstream of Russian and Soviet theatre after the revolution.<br /><a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" data-mce-href="http://thefairgroundbooth.com/" dir="ltr" href="http://thefairgroundbooth.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">thefairgroundbooth.com</a><br /><a class="ot-anchor aaTEdf" data-mce-href="http://michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/" dir="ltr" href="http://michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;" target="_blank">michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com</a><br /><span class="proflinkWrapper" style="line-height: 1.5;"><span class="proflinkPrefix" style="line-height: 1.5;">+</span><a class="proflink aaTEdf" data-mce-href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/113718909947503936935" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/113718909947503936935" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">Russian Theatre Documentary Series</a></span><br /><a class="ot-hashtag aaTEdf" data-mce-href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23thefairgroundbooth" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23thefairgroundbooth" rel="nofollow" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">#thefairgroundbooth</a><br /><a class="ot-hashtag aaTEdf" data-mce-href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23russiantheatre" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23russiantheatre" rel="nofollow" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">#russiantheatre</a><br /><a class="ot-hashtag aaTEdf" data-mce-href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23theatre" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23theatre" rel="nofollow" style="color: #743399; line-height: 1.5;">#theatre</a></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-13890052666284950982014-10-04T11:45:00.001-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.201-08:00Vakhtangov and the Russian Theater Premiere<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As the post production film Vakhtangov and the Russian theatre comes to an end ( just some tidying up to do in various technical questions) other projects are already heaving into view. This is a mixture of new work and old which have been left to one side while the Vakhtangov film gets finished.</span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> Strangely tired after such a marathon trek with Vakhtangov starting from initial research and development, writing of the script filming, securing archive footage and finally post production. However keen to get on with the work that has been waiting - books and films and feeling surprisingly fresh on this score</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-22190528165434533502014-10-04T11:45:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.187-08:00Vakhtangov and the Russian Theater Premiere<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9JlZ9N4aHBstNkVV27K7GXzBrFeET0TBDCABLcvnZhshYWnJZnG_ljLvuJrzLuwO60S2RTKTJ37D88824IclnrhyphenhyphenWiIk4SAvpf7OpigN8Dq81zfLpd9ipntABlIjBaA7HjZvwu3eZA-E/s1600/51+HNipO1hL._SY679_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9JlZ9N4aHBstNkVV27K7GXzBrFeET0TBDCABLcvnZhshYWnJZnG_ljLvuJrzLuwO60S2RTKTJ37D88824IclnrhyphenhyphenWiIk4SAvpf7OpigN8Dq81zfLpd9ipntABlIjBaA7HjZvwu3eZA-E/s1600/51+HNipO1hL._SY679_.jpg" width="223" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">Several days back from the UK after a successful screening and Premiere of </span><a href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #743399; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre.</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> It took place on May 10th 2014 as part of the Vakhtangov study day at the Rose Bruford college of theatre and performance organised by The Stanislavsky Centre which is based at the centre. It was a privilege to be able to participate in the and share the podium with the Vakhtangov scholar and specialist </span><a href="https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncf.edu%2Fandrei-malaev-babel&ei=FN6WU8ytKMq9ygPDj4CwCQ&usg=AFQjCNHfOiccNBRobpPPWPWZ6b7XwhmN5w&sig2=Qo_DVQJyPedwDvGGfzSeIA&bvm=bv.68693194,d.bGQ" style="border: 0px; color: #743399; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Andrei Malaev Babe</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">l who has written two books about Vakhtangov ‘</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=andrei%20malaev-babel&sprefix=andrei+mal%2Caps%2C646&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aandrei%20malaev-babel" style="border: 0px; color: #743399; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The Vakhtangov Sourcebook” and “Evgeny Vakhtangov – A Critical Portrait”</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">. Also </span><a href="http://http//www.michaelchekhovstudio.org.uk/" style="border: 0px; color: #743399; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Graham Dixon of the Mikhail Chekhov Studio</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> in the morning session which he participated in together with Andrie Malaev Babel The morning session was dived into three parts. A long introduction presented jointly by Andrie and Graham, then the film Vakhtangov and the Russian Avant-garde which I briefly introduced and then a question and answer session with Andrie Malaev Babel, Graham Dixon and myself.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-28666455120941943972013-09-10T10:02:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.216-08:00The Russian Avant-garde film series - Slide show<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="355" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dHhFBURTEwFDAgUk2Mk0fpWn4qiJduRqWA-1vlg0-8I/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="490"></iframe><br /><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-18726065703015926442013-09-06T11:33:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.230-08:00Japan - Philosophical Landscapes (playlist)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLD9DFC52370B93EA0" width="425"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-44116057250739133252013-08-20T07:22:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.243-08:00Moscow musicians and dancers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dynYgIwkmfQNK3y2_LZnbML1wgCe80y2T0KxsYXJtBOcmAuij5K2rxCEB0YH8KkJtRitMld13t5Hq-8ajXEgQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-26449787406394214772012-11-02T03:30:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.270-08:00 Coming to the end of another Moscow evening. Long nights drawing out so that it stays light almost to eleven. Some good work today on the new film <a href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com" target="_blank">Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre</a> <a href="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/793934720.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-80" title="793934720" src="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/793934720-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" /></a>. Really just in the early stages of pre production, script writing, collecting research materials etc but things starting to take on a rough shape. Over the weekend met with Slava who was the camera operator on two of the films in my series about the <a href="http://www.russianavantgarde.copernicusfilms,com" target="_blank">Russian Avant-garde</a> - <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/mayakovsky-the-film" target="_blank">"Mayakovsky"</a> and <a href="http://www.filmdiy.com/all-movies/filmdiy/documentaries/meyerhold-theatre-and-the-russian-avant-garde" target="_blank">"Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde"</a> in the Scandinavian restaurant. Restuarant which harks back to the mid 1990s but still maintains its allure as a meeting place for foreigners. One of its attractions is the beautiful shaded courtyard. <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotos-g298484-d691625-Scandinavia-Moscow_Central_Russia.html"><img class="alignleft" src="http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/72/85/19/filename-img-0843-jpg.jpg" alt="Photos of Scandinavia, Moscow" width="440" height="330" /></a>This photo of <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298484-d691625-Reviews-Scandinavia-Moscow_Central_Russia.html">Scandinavia</a> is courtesy of TripAdvisorUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5784672308114747695.post-22912562350162727272012-11-02T03:20:00.000-07:002017-01-27T10:32:31.283-08:00 Working on the script for <a href="http://www.vakhtangov.copernicusfilms.com" target="_blank">Vakhtangov film</a> - going through the script step by step to bring together a full draft. Also thinking about widening the short pieces I have been doing called "Chekhov Country" which is a a kind of side project which takes in the process of actually making the films - going around different locations and filming short episodes which will feed into the whole series - kind of like additional information about Russian theatre from that period. <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/chekhov-country" target="_blank">Chekhov Country</a> is a not essentially about Chekhov ( although a lot of it will involve Chekhov) but more about the theatre world of Russia. <p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/1465056640.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-93 aligncenter" title="1465056640" src="http://www.michaelcraig.copernicusfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/1465056640-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" /></a>I would hope to give more of a simple flavour of the atmosphere and aura of Russia and its relationship to theatre and acting. When making a film there is a lot of stuff on the periphery which doesn't go into the film but all the same is there and has a validity, its part of the overall macrocosm which exists around a subject or topic. Therefore it is hard to isolate and compartmentalise everything into one film</p><p style="text-align: left;">There is an old saying that a poet is more than a poet in Russia. Similarly the theatre is more than the theatre in Russia. Its influence and presence is everywhere. A whole life style seems to be built around it and inside it so that it stands as an institution itself. Although the aura of the silver age in Russia has declined in many ways it still lingers on in contemporary Russia through its theatrical institutions.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><img class="aligncenter" title="Metropol" src="http://static.eurobookings.com/cache/exp/max350xmax350/hotels/1000000/20000/12000/11963/11963_56_b.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="238" />A week or so ago as I came out onto the square which stands in front of the Bolshoi theatre and stared across at the Metropol on the opposite side of the road, with its mosaics by <a href="http://surrealist-fantasy-art.blogspot.com/2009/08/mikhail-vruble-and-his-imagination.html">Vruble</a> in the fading Moscow light you could sense that connection with a glorious artistic past which many Russians still yearn to recreate and on nights like this you can return to in your imagination - one of the great things about living in Moscow.</p> <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e63_5MxvVPo" frameborder="0" width="560" height="315"></iframe> Have been invited to show one of my films at a festival of architecture in Moscow. Waiting for information about the festival before deciding but it might be interesting. Possibility of another event in October which I would like to participate in but early days yet.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0