* See Brecht & Epic Theatre I teach; "Taganka Experience" is responsible for my love for theatre. Many of my shows have something from this first love...
Second group (split since Lubimov's return, long story): Commonwealth Of Taganka Actors
Taganskaya Ploshchad (M. Taganskaya)
915-1155/1148, reservations and delivery 798-8704
Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre, 1964-1994 by Birgit Beumers; Harwood Academic, 1997 - Part I: Agitation in the 1960s: Society as a Generator of Change
- 1: The Development of a Poetic Theatre
- 2: 1968 and After: the Crushing of a Repertoire
- Part II: The Tragic Dimension of the 1970s: the Individual and Society
- 3: The Individual in the Present and in the Past
- 4: Individual and Artist in Crisis
- Part III: The 1980s in the West
- 5: In Exile
- 6: Lyubimov at the Opera
- Part IV: Musical Visions for the 1990s
- 7: The Return of the “master”
- 8: Musical Harmony and the Doomed Individual
Thirty-five years ago, on April 23, 1964, Yury Lyubimov took a show he had created in 1963 with students at the Shchukin Theater Institute and offered it as the first entry in the repertoire of a new playhouse on Taganka Square. It was Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person of Setzuan" and it marked the birth of what was to become one of the most popular, controversial and important theaters of the Soviet era.
Now, to celebrate that event, Yury Lyubimov has staged that original show anew with a cast of veteran and young actors. Friday night's opener of the revamped "Good Person" will be attended by guests and dignitaries from all over the world, witnesses of, or participants in, one or more of Lyubimov's 90 career productions. Of them, 39 were staged at the Taganka.
The Taganka has always been a lightning rod for talent and trouble.
Borovsky, Lubimov's Designer (images are gone)
Its most famous actor, Vladimir Vysotsky (left), was, before his death in 1980, a national icon thanks not only to his acting, but also to the powerful songs he sang in his famous, gritty voice. The writers and composers who have worked at the Taganka make up a who's who of Soviet culture. They include Yury Trifonov, Boris Mozhayev, Fyodor Abramov, Andrei Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, Dmitry Shostakovich and countless others.
vysocky.jpg alt=Vysotzky [image]
The Taganka has often been the stage for strife. Communist Party leaders banned such shows as "Alive!" (1968) and engineered Lyubimov's exile and loss of Soviet citizenship in 1984. Even after Lyubimov's return in 1989, the theater was shaken by a rivalry that saw it break into warring factions, a situation that continues in force today. Meanwhile, the Taganka's renowned productions of "Ten Days That Shook the World" (1965), "Hamlet" (1971), "The Master and Margarita" (1977) and many others, were perceived by the Soviet intelligentsia as rare glimpses of truth and uncompromising honesty. They garnered for the theater a reputation as the nation's theatrical conscience. That time may now have passed, but the Taganka, almost miraculously, lives on. The refurbished "Good Person" is the theater's third new production this season and it serves notice that Lyubimov, at 82, has no intentions of slowing down.
Copyright 1999 John Freedman
All Freedman's articles are posted with the author's permission
"MOSCOW STAGE: CRISIS OF IDENTITY"
Abstract: Relations of Drama to National/Cultural Identities
Present disintegration of the Soviet Union points at the duality of National/Cultural Identity of the Soviet period of the Russian History. The Russian Theatre (Stanislavsky-Chekhov) had it's Communist counterpart (Meyerhold-Mayakovsky) and this
confrontation of national and international tendencies resulted in what became known as "Socialist Realism" (1933-present).
Pre-revolutionary concentration on drama became revolutionary and post-revolutionary concentration on stage language (needs to escape boundaries of national literature for theatre). Such attempts to produce a new mythology resulted in imposed false identity and lost confidence by audience in culture in general, not only in Soviet culture. Present freedom in Russia hasn't produced significant plays, or new theatre styles. Paradox of "Theatre of Perestroyka" is symptomatic - fundamental separation of playwrighting from theatre institutions, theaters - from the state, state from the society, and society from the individual. Playwright, a single man, is an outsider, more a writer than a theatre figure. "Surprising silence" of writes for the theatre in Moscow is a natural product of alienation of theatre from the "street culture society", from theatre itself, from the national (Russian), or Western tradition, and finally, from the writer himself (intelligencia had disappeared and a Moscow writer found himself in a position too familiar to the Western writer - alone with himself). Theatre crisis (ironically similar to our Broadway Theatre without Drama) comes with an ultimate question: Could Theatre be a method of search for self-identity of the individual without being a tool in national/cultural self-identity?
Theatres like Taganka paved the way for a breakthrough to a free, democratic society."
This was said by the current President of Russia Vladimir Putin. This phrase describes the true nature of the existence of the Taganka - it changed with the times. Birgit Beumers points out in the first sentence of his book Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre that the history of the Taganka is "intrinsically" joined with the history of the Soviet Union. The theatre was established in 1945 by A.K. Plotnikov as a theatre of drama and comedy; from then on it swung from Stalin to Khrushchev - trying to keep up with the times and wants of the leaders.
The Taganka Theatre cannot be discussed without the mention of its great director and supporter Yury Lyubimov. Lyubimov made a great push for the theatre which before his presence was an ordinary place with a huge debt. Lyubimov changed the image from ordinary to one of the greatest Comedy and Drama theatres in Moscow. Lyubimov was in fact the person who gave the theatre its name - "Taganka."
This name was decided on because of its location on Taganka square. The word "tagan" in Russian means "trivet" or three-legged stand. This name is unique since unlike the other theatres such as Pushkin and Stanislavsky, Taganka is not named after a famous person. In the theatre, Lyubimov created his own selection of plays and adaptations, ones that were unique from the rest of the repertoires in other theatres.
The struggle continued between politics and the theatre all the way up to Yeltsin. Lyubimov and the actor Gubenko fought over the post for director of the theatre. On the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lyubimov signed a contract with the Moscow mayor which entitled him to the "first refusal" to buy the theatre, and it also introduced a contract system for the actors.
Throughout its history, The Taganka Theatre housed some of the famous actors of Russia such as: Antipov, Davydov, Shapovalov, Borovsky, Filatov and Smekhov. These are just a few actors who can be found in the history of the Taganka.
* Lubimov and Theatre THEORY --
