Drama to order, part two

But people go to these places as I told you because sometimes they have

no other place to go in order to relax or to have some entertainment.

Would you say that the Soviet theatre performs in

proportion many more all Russian plays and foreign classics than they perform

Soviet play.

That I wouldn't say. And I think quite on the contrary they want to

perform them less and less because they need the place

or the Soviet plays for this purpose of propaganda. And I think that the

need of propaganda is increasing constantly

especially since they were told what to wear. I could repeat it again

then because the people saw the west and the Soviet

government is definitely afraid of it.

Would you say that the the audiences generally. I prefer

seeing the all the plays to the Soviet play definitely

without any doubt.

Do you remember any of the older players the owners or the Juvenile Yeah you of

course it was Cheika But you know it was sad for death you know and

by counted X a tall story which was very successful

especially with Camille. It was the stay yes uncle's dream. For

some reasons the karmas of Survivor not performed anymore in my

days. And then there was another very successful play the days of the two of

bins which was the only realistic play of about Russian

Revolution. But precisely because it was realistic it is not performed

anymore.

What happened to the days of the top Britons Why did they take it off the boards.

Well that I don't know. One can only guess. Probably there was too

much truth for the Soviet government which doesn't want people to know the truth.

It was a play about the attack of Laura's

forces on the city of Kiev. But. The Bolsheviks didn't

figure in it very much did they know.

But the fact that a family of Russian intellectuals of

Russian until again today decides to take side all of that

evolution is only because they were too much disappointed and the

white army and in particular it is really a

very poor reason. From the viewpoint of Soviet government why the play

has been taken off.

It is said that Stanislavski the great director objected

to the refusal of the government to keep this play on

the stage. Have you ever heard anything about that.

I didn't hear much about that but I know that it didn't help him find him though

for a short time he obtained the permission to deplane should be

performed.

He did obtain permission and that was when it came back to the stage that I

myself saw this play in the first Moscow out in

Moscow and I would agree with you that it was certainly one of the most satisfying

theatrical performances that I've ever seen in the Soviet Union.

Well I want to thank you Mr. Alexander now for your very interesting information that you've

given us today.

Our program continues following a 10 second pause for station identification.

Well.

You are listening to people under communism. A transcribed

series of follow up programs based on documented evidence and expert

knowledge about the power and intentions of the Soviet Union.

Materials for this program have been supplied by Dr. A.J. Simmons chairman of the

department of Slavic languages at Columbia University and professor of Russian literature

in its Russian Institute.

Here is Dr. Simmons to continue with drama to

order in snowball.

We have had an example of an anti American play

designed to influence Soviet children. What of the

still more abundant anti American plays that are calculated to

indoctrinate Soviet grownups sort of as the mad

haberdasher may be taken as an average sample of these many anti American plays for

adults written to the author of the Communist Party. It deals with

American politics and the scene is laid in a Missouri town. The

hero Charlie. I have a dash feels in his business and is willing

to serve anyone who will pay him the points of contact with President Truman in

his career a barely disguised in a riot of Soviet inventiveness.

The fact that when Charlie puts on a Hitler mustache he bears a striking resemblance to the

dead dictator excites the imagination of a Missouri political

boss. BOB HOGG who was searching for a way of arousing Americans

to a picture of war hysteria. BOB HOGG persuades Charlie to

pose as Hitler return to life from a hiding place prepared to

lead an anti-communist crusade. Charlie meanwhile has a quiet

and Eva Brown in the person of a long series saleswoman sissy

Slesinger who is also willing to see Boss Hogg and his Wall

Street mentors for a consideration. BOB HOGG presents to Hitler

Charlie to a Wall Street representative a senator though Charlie

slips up here and there in his impersonation he displays such

talent at making speeches calling for war against the Soviet Union

that the senator decides that Charlie is too valuable to be

wasted on such a stunt and he runs him for the next senator from

Missouri. The remainder of the play concerns Charlie's race for the Senate in

which is speeches against the Soviet Union out hit hit and in the

course of which of the characters are introduced such as a certain Judge

Mel Dean who dispenses justice with a billiard cue and a hand

between games at a local nightclub.

It is difficult to say what the Russian people think of propaganda plays like the

mad haberdasher but the official press claims them as faithful

pictures of American life today. Such plays are only one

indication of the manner in which Soviet playwrights are subjected to the most rigorous of

controls and to a narrow range of themes dictated by the party.

All three headers and drama are under the ultimate direction of the Committee on

affairs of the aughts of the US as a council of ministers.

The following scenes portray a situation that no doubt has become a

commonplace in the Life and Work of the Soviet playwright.

Since the 1946 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on

drama and the theater the characters are imaginary but

all the information is drawn directly from Soviet sources

and much of the dialogue is taken from a recent article on an then

well-known Soviet playwright in Soviet school year is Cousteau and from a

prob the editorial. The scene is the office of public it's

Greco of chairman of the repertory committee an agency of the Committee on

affairs of the arts. All Soviet plays must be approved by the

repertory committee before production is permitted. Pavel of age

is seated at his desk.

I mean even a bit of a rising young Moscow

playwright and his you wrote me to come and see Euclid Popovich.

Oh yes. Nicolay Evanovich. Have a seat.

Let me see. It was about your play. Where is that manuscript

and here it is. The golden harvest. Nice

title. Well the final report of the repertory committee is in and

boy I'm sad to tell you.

Committee rejects it but publish it you previously gave me every assurance that it

would be entirely acceptable you praised it.

You even said that it would be a brilliant stepping stone in my career haps I was a bit hasty but you know my boy I

have a committee to deal with. They've had a meeting on it.

Their report is in what can be wrong with it I've used the utmost care to compare

number of things.

Let me read from the report.

The hero of this play the manager of the collective is

represented as a good communist but in act 2 Scene 1 he

is pictured at a festive affair of the collective is getting drunk and

to Scene 3 and his pride. He refuses to take the advice of the work of

Phillipe about the approaching storm with the result that part of the

harvest is destroyed his relations with the chairman of the district committee of the

party are hardly comradely at the beginning of the play.

My hero is a good communist he reorganizes the whole collective which had fallen apart during the

war and in the end the Cohoes wins the battle for over your head it was a Communist is a

slander against the great name of the party.

Then this negative character what's his name. Here it is Kamal fails

the report says that he is but trade much more attractively than the hero although he is shiftless and even

a savage.

Don't you see that I must have some dramatic conflict.

And if you McKay if after he learns to take the advice of my hero and comes up with a good example of the hard working

peasant is reformed and become yes I know all that but this picture of a called

a horse is not true to the reality of Soviet life. Don't take it too

hard my boy. I'm sure if you rework this manuscript in the light of the criticism of the

committee you might still make an acceptable play of it. But of

course I can promise you approve.

I see. I see.

In a single room where he lives. The young playwright Nicholai is now seated

in conversation with his very intimate friend Alexandrovitch a

young novelist.

What I can't understand you Kali is why you're so broken up because your

play is been rejected. It happens to the best devout dramatists.

It's happened to you before this. Lucky for you it didn't get produced in its

present for you would have been roasted by the reviewers and maybe

that would be the end of your career. Revise it is he suggested.

And I have bet it will be a success. I just know this is the best thing I've ever written. For

goodness sake speak lower.

Nikolai has gone over to the door and stands there listening. He then goes over to the window

and pulls the shade returns to his chair and continues in a lower tone.

You know that I'm a candidate for the party but I've grown up with the regime and accept it

wholeheartedly. But I can't go into filing what little OT I have to satisfy a

wooden formula stage success. I tell you that the

systematic ruthlessness with which everything really acute live and moving has been

deleted blocked out expunged from plays in the repertory Committee. The

the fury with which the critics and members of the repertory committee have flung themselves against the truth for

picturing of a life in which along with the good there still exist various kinds of filth.

Well maybe you should go in for a drama that has no conflict. All the

critics are talking about it.

You know why they're talking about conflict was drama. This theory arose because of the fact that

plays containing sharp life conflicts have to pass through the barbed wire obstacles of

the agencies in charge of repertory. I believe that my fellow playwright

that I was entirely correct when he said publicly that everything living true to

life shop freshened on stereotype is combed out and smoothed out to the point where it's

no longer recognizable. Every bold and stereotyped word in a play has to be

defended at the cost of the playwright's nerves in the play's quality. In the face of this

to write plays without any conflict without negative characters is all that's left for me.

That's pretty harsh.

You just don't take the right attitude towards conflict and negative characters.

You remember what I said the other day in its editorial on drama.

I can almost quote it. The writer as he truthfully

portrays the shortcomings and contradictions that exist in life by

actively affirm the positive basis of our socialist reality must

help the new to triumph Ravenel said. One cannot

tolerate plays in which the negative characters dominate everything and

moreover portrayed more vividly than the hero.

You talk like the chairman of the repertory Committee. We hear

much chatter from the critics nowadays of these keepers of silence among the playwrights. Why do they

keep silent.

Is it not perhaps because they've never learned how to write doll smooth little plays like

like the Globe's drama with a pine trees. All the

characters in it are absorbed only in the thought of felling timber no matter whether they're visiting in one of those

homes seated at dinner or attending a wedding. The talk constantly turns on felling trees

and rationalizing the work processes.

Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit. You remember I saw that play with you

exaggerating.

I got a copy of the script here let me read you a bit. How do you know the heroine is

asked why do you come so infrequently Cath yet we hardly ever see you

at that ina shrugging her shoulders. Why should I come when Dr advantage summons us

I come to the office and hear what he has to say about lumbering the

MP. But just for a visit chat at their dinner. I'm

too busy my money and the MP. We don't talk with auntie in the forest now days

either I didn't or we don't have anything to talk about in the forest moment MP.

We just go back and forth and talk about lumber.

The characters in the play certainly do not have anything to talk about except lumber.

Even as she awaits a meeting with a love of the girl thinks perhaps he just wants to talk about work

about lumber and even when the wedding celebration is going on the young folk

and the guests discuss the challenge issued in the timber felling competition. Well I

admit that it does sound a bit hopeless No I tell you I've got the if I may recall to you again

what we have said the future would hold a great deal for the theatre and for the Soviet audiences.

If the if the creative energies of the writers were free from the fetters forged in

bureaucratic nooks and crannies by indifferent officials who preach the idea of

conflict bliss speak softly speak gently be pious writing.

Perhaps Nicholai was fortunate. As his friend indicated that his play had been

prevented by the repertory committee from being produced for rehearsals on an approved

play may be finished and the expensive business of mounting it completed when the

local party committee in a town or even the party cell in the

given theater nearly every theater has such a party cell among its

workers may object to certain ideological failings in the plate

at a dress rehearsal or after a few public performances and

succeed in having it removed from the board. In such cases

dire results may follow for all concerned. For example the well-known

dramatist K. Finn recently had his play honesty

approved by the repertory Committee of the Committee on affairs of the gods. It was

produced by the mall of a theater in Moscow. Shortly thereafter

high communist officials objected to its contents promptly. The

committee on affairs of the arts publicly admitted that it had made a gross error

in ever accepting this play for its approved lists. The play was banned.

The dramatist was castigated in print. The producer was dismissed from his job and the

director of the theatre was reprimanded. All concerned publicly

recanted their faults in having anything to do with

honesty. It was explained in the press that this play formally

approved by a national government committee had somehow turned out to

be false to Soviet like that it did not draw a living

portraits of the hero of the play. Who is the director of a factory the

workers and members of the intelligentsia.

The polling is a very typical criticism prob with him re so be it

dramatist in the direct fears Finn

in his play honesty declared the director of the large metallurgical

plan started out of to be an allegedly talented innovator engine is

a good business executive an organizer and then with extraordinary

ease turned him into a petty tyrant a bureaucrat and an over log

into an obedient is tremendous his assistant the careerist and lickspittle cut rate of

only by a harmful play on sensational clashes. Is it possible to

explain the fact that Finn made his hero contrary to all Soviet

laws and elementary norms of Soviet public morals. Take away from the city

Soviet stories a pond and even land belonging to the

TAL haughtily and mock the labor and creative toil of the doctors

engineers workers and other citizens of the town behaved mightily and

scornfully at the session of the polity bureau and undeservedly sweep aside the

healthy criticism of the communists. Both the producer and

the actor who played the part of cut a dove are at fault for making that negative character

attractive story not all of the hero is a malicious

self-centered maniac who must not be corrected but expelled from the party.

In short they fell into the trap that confronts every Soviet

dramatist today who tries to follow the party demand to portray a negative

in positive territory. He drew his hero less attractively

than the negative Creator in striving for dramatic conflict he

employed a commonplace stereotype of Soviet drama a positive

Soviet hero who has some faults but who can be

reformed only.

Unfortunately the communist hero still Jada had too many

faults and the party critics objected. A communist

just couldn't be that bad.

Or erm. The

OS.

And now let us look in on a Moscow symposium of a prominent dramatist and

theatrical people. It was called Not long ago to discuss the reasons

why Soviet playwrights were not writing comedy was a matter that is

greatly disturbing the committee on affairs of the yobs. The whole discussion was

reported in full in the yatra the leading theatrical magazine

under us rises to speak to the gathering.

The School for Scandal has had the longest run and it is always well attended.

This one fact testifies to our audiences lively interest in comedy.

She is speaking of course of Sharon's famous School for Scandal which was the most

popular performance this past season in the great Moscow theater where she

is a leading comic actress.

This very fact serves as a bitter reproach to the theatre and the playwrights for the

lack of contemporary Soviet comedies in the Moscow Art Theatre repertory. It

is strange and sad to me a comedienne to think that up to now

I have not acted one row in a Soviet comedy. But I still

dream of it and wait patiently.

No I am Yukon of a prominent figure in the Soviet theatrical world

gets up to speak he addresses the gathering on the reasons for the lack of

comedies.

Hardly do matters begin to approach actual production when every kind of doubt

and misgiving sets in and not just among the play it safe. People on the

committee on affairs of the arts and the theater critics. But among the very persons

who create the comedies the writers directors actors and

producers.

He goes on to explain how a recent comedy was mangled before production

by various theatrical bosses because they feared its ideological angle

everything Shoppe and sit Derek till it was deleted from the play.

In the end everyone was a fine Soviet citizen

and the place had nothing.

The characters were the same when the curtain fell as they had been when it rose the negative

characters had been made positive and the heroes who had no one to struggle

against were like Don Quixote fighting windmills. The appearance

of such plays is the result of that there is lack of adherents to principle.

Not only that it is the authors should not consent to rewrite the play in defiance of

their conscience and deny convictions but this is sheer

cynicism on the part of the speaker.

He knows full well that conscience and inner convictions have no place in

the Soviet scheme of things unless they happen to be communist conscience

and communist in a convictions and that the Soviet playwright if he does

not revise his manuscript at the request of the repertory committee will never

get his play produced. Then you can have goes on to explain to

the audience his idea of comedy.

Comedy is a weapon. A precious and

effective weapon one must take good care of weapons.

They must not be allowed to rust and they must strike. Get our enemies.

Just think that in recent days there has not been one great

satirical comedy about apparent enemies about those who planned to

subjugate the world with cholera germs Soviet

enemies trying to subjugate the world with cholera germs

as a subject for aloft the speakers need look no further

for the reason why comedy has benn is from the Soviet stage

these militarism have slain the first principle of comedy

and the ability to laugh at themselves. The Russian people have

always loved loft but nowadays they must find only a grim

humor in the words of the speaker that all connected with the production of

comedy on the Soviet stage trying to play it safe.

Here is a frank revelation that all are afraid to take any

chances with the ideological demands of the party which urges the

ridiculing of abuses in Soviet life provided one

avoids laughing at the real cause of the abuses. The top

leadership of the Communist Party.

Time is in the Soviet. The Africa world must look back nostalgically

to the early period of the regime for a number of years after the

1979 revolution. The Soviet theatre enjoyed an exciting

artistic development which compelled the admiration of many foreign

experts who in those days were cordially invited to the US s

to see brilliant performances of an amazingly rich variety of

foreign Russian and Soviet plays. It was the age of the

great directors Stanislaus De Vocht Tung Mayer to hold and tell

you and of their stopping experimentations in the art of the

theatre. The state handsomely supported the theatre and even permitted

playwrights considerable freedom to write plays that reflected Soviet

life with some measure of faithfulness. No all

these great directors is dead. The state has withdrawn much of its financial

support and experimentation is frowned upon as mere

formalism. Today even the party has pointedly recognized the

abysmal failure of both the theatre and the repertory. It showed its

disapproval while ignoring the fact that its interference had been the real cause of the

debacles by refusing to select a first or second

prize stollen when among Soviet plays of 1951 and

by publishing an official condemnation of drama and dramatic criticism

in propped up old dramatists peace and publicly to jump on the

new official bandwagon bid to retracted his theory of conflict

less drama. Other playwrights and critics appeared in print to support the

new party line in drama which is true to life. The

kind of true says prov which admits that there are bad people

in the Soviet world but that they can never prevail because this

would be false to Soviet troops. New most recent

word in this controversy has been spoken by the popular dramatist

Soprano in Literary Gazette in which he frankly admits the need of

controls as necessary devices to whip Soviet

playwrights into a state of happiness over their salary to stick

straight.

It is in vain that some of our writers maintain that the committee on affairs of the

arts must not now interfere with playwrights all the work of the theatre.

The committee is a state agency responsible told the party and the people of all the

theatre repertory. Therefore act of creative work with the playwrights

is its prime duty.

There was state censorship Oh so in the days of the czars. But this was

mild compared to that of the Soviets today and the state then did

not force upon the Dramatis a narrow range of themes that would

reflect the ideology of a monolithic government. Playwrights then were

free to select their feed and the famous plays of one

vision of Google Tolstoy and Chekhov were

performed. Now the most pointed criticism of the vicious

party controls on drama is the very fact that the most popular

plays in the Soviet Union today are the great pre-revolutionary

Russian dramas written in the time of the ZOB was.

The era. Of the unheard of.

Linear to. The of. The

era.

Of you have just heard drama to order one and a

transcribed series of follow ups. Grabs people under communism

based on documented evidence and expert knowledge about the power and intentions

of the Soviet Union. Materials for this broadcast were supplied by Dr

Ernest Jason the. Chairman of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia

University. This eries as a whole was prepared in consultation with scholars

from the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. The Hoover Institute and library at

Stanford University and the Russian Institute of Columbia University. Your

narrator was Dr Ernest J Simmons. This program was

produced and directed by Frank Pat. These programs are prepared

and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters

and are made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education. An

independent organization established by the Ford Foundation.

This is the NABJ network.