Alice Koonen in Salomé
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In the present season the Kamerny Theatre will produce "Egyptian Nights", a play that I have been working on for two years. It will include Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra". Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and Pushkin's poem "Egyptian Nights". This production is a characteristic example of the way in which we approach the classics.
In producing one of the classic dramas, the fundamental and essential task is to make it effective and stimulating, of real significance for the modern spectator. Besides this, the director is faced by a second task that is also of essential significance: he must discover and disclose those elements of the drama that endow it with enduring vitality, i.e. that make it a classic, and building up the spectacle around these elements, restrain or even completely discard those elements which, though very effective in their time have now, due to change of time and place, become mere ballast. Thus the experienced gardener cuts away dead branches from a tree and far from wounding the tree imparts to it new life and beauty.
And finally the third and no less important task is adequately to disclose the historical setting of the play, that is, disclose the social milieu in which the action of the drama takes place. This means that it is by no means permissible to wrench the drama out of the historical setting in which it was born, since this would be tantamount to destroying the fundamental base of the drama, apart from which it could not develop. At the same time, however, while preserving the historical setting of the action, it is necessary to re-create it, not by means of historical externals, but on the contrary by depicting its essential content, since only by this means is it possible to bring the action of the drama closer to the understanding of the modern audience.
Thus, using all the material given by the dramatist and the epoch in which the action of the play is laid, the director must select those essential elements that will serve to project the action of the drama through space and time, and bring it into more intimate contact with the modern audience. This is the underlying method of my work with the classics, a method that I have in the main employed in my earlier productions. This was the principle that guided me in my work with "Phedre", when I rejected the whole of its mythological shell, which for us had become a dead, useless decoration, and introduced new personages and scenes that intensified certain scenes of the play. This was also my method with "Storm" by Ostrovski, when I eliminated those elements of local life that had so lost all significance for us that they lost all possibility of being made effective, but preserved those that had retained their effectiveness.
Guided again by this method I have approached the production of "Egyptian Nights" an epic composed by me, and in which I have incorporated as I have mentioned above Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and Pushkin's "Egyptian Nights". I have synthesized these three works into one great scenic spectacle, which far from being fragmentary, is a unified and organically welded composition. Through the individual fates of its heroes, it will disclose the struggle of two epochs, two cultures - that of Egypt in the agony of decay, and that of militant Roman imperialism born on the ruins of Roman "democracy".
The translation of William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" has been made by the poet Vladimir Lugovski. The music to "Egyptian Nights" has been written by the well-known composer Sergei Prokofiev, and is organically related to the whole compositional structure and idea of the production. The scenes and decorations have been designed by V. Rindin. The role of Cleopatra will be played by one of our finest actresses, the creator of Phedre, Juliet, Adrienne Lecouvreur and many other brilliant classical roles in the Kamerny Theatre - Alice Koonen. (Back)
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THREE ORANGES JOURNAL No.7 May 2004
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