Norris Houghton - Moscow

Houghton, Norris

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MOSCOW REHEARSALS

mother by Gorki, at the Realistic Theatre, Moscow

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CHARLES CRANE LEATHERBEEIN MEMORIAM

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'Preface

Books in English about the Soviet theatre have beenwritten for the most part by critics and historians ofthe stage who have criticized and chronicled. Being neithercritic nor historian, I have attempted to make a record ofthe Soviet theatre not externally from the standpoint ofan observer and recorder of effects, but internally throughthe eyes of a participating craftsman. No one who spendseven half a year in Soviet Russia can expect to come outunaffected in one way or another. I went in expecting toconcern myself only with the technical processes of an art.I came out six months later filled with all sorts of ideas(and confusions, too, I admit) about that art and aboutthe Soviet experiment-which-is-no-longer-an-experimentand about the relationship between the two. The technicalprocesses are recorded herein and some few of the ideas andimpressions besides. These latter have become for me thesignificant part of the whole study.

I really have no right to call this an account of theSoviet theatre, for it is concerned only with the theatresof Moscow. Six months was not a long enough time forme to study with any thoroughness the dramatic work inother parts of the Union, so it seemed wiser to concentratemy attention within the capital. But I am aware, andwish to point out emphatically, that excellent work is being done in Leningrad, in Tiflis, and in other places towhich I make no reference.

Since my study has been confined to Moscow, the theatrical center of Russia, New York, the theatrical center

of the United States, has seemed the appropriate city of

Vll

America to compare with it when comparisons have offered themselves as a means of pointing the meaning tovarious things I have seen. I hope that the frequency ofallusions to the New York theatre will be accepted withthis understanding by readers in other parts of the country.

The reader who discovers that I have not touched uponthe Soviet ballet, opera, or cinema must not conclude thatI do not consider them worthy of report. Again the limitation of time has restricted my field to the dramaticstage, and it is just because I consider these other branchesof the theatre to be so important that I have preferred notto do them the injustice of a cursory study.

In the rendering of Russian proper names, always adifficult problem, I have generally followed the scholarsinternational system of transliteration which, while rendering such familiar names as Tschaikowsky unfamiliarly asChaikovski, yet seems to me the closest and most accuratemethod to employ.

I have been frequently asked since I left the SovietUnion whether I was allowed to see the things I wantedto see, whether I had freedom to come and go and to talkto people as I pleased. I should like to record the fact thatevery effort was made by everyone with whom I came intocontact to open up to me all the work of the Soviet theatre which I wished to observe. To P. I. Novitski, headof the Theatre Section of the Peoples Commissariat ofEducation, I am particularly indebted, as much for theinformation derived from personal conversations with himand from public addresses of his, as for his courtesy inofficially introducing me to all the theatres of the R.S.F.S.R.To all the theatre directors, actors, regisseurs, designers,playwrights, technicians, trade union and governmentofficials with whom I was associated in my work, and

whose name is legion, I am equally obliged for generous cooperation.

My first acknowledgment, however, must be to theGuggenheim Foundation whose appointment of me to aFellowship made this study and the writing of this bookpossible. My thanks also go to Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, who helped me to break theMoscow ice; to Lee Simonson for valuable assistance in thepursuit of my study and its publication; and to ElizabethReynolds Hapgood for assistance in translating the material in the appendix to this book.