Mini-Site by Michael
Benedikt
[Last Modified 9/01 & 6/01]
Notes to Poem & Picture of Taganka Director in USA in l987
Also Online re Taganka--A Very Special Russian Theatre Co., then & now New: Taganka Troupe at Yale U. 'Arts & Ideas Festival' 6/01
OF THE
C
O
L
O
R
F
U
L
'TAGANKA TROUPE'
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, l957
Written after the discovery in l986 of a critical article published
in l967 on Theatre in the
esthetically mostly drably Conservative & generally repressive Communist
Soviet Union.
Article--found in the form of a clipping crumpled up at the back of a filing
cabinet--
appeared in NY Times Entertainment Section at the height of USA's
politically liberal, esthetically adventurous
l960's. In tune with those times, article praises "Taganka Troupe"--a Russian
theatre/dance company
which, under its director Yuri Lyubimov, kept in step with Western-European-style
experiment.
In our times young, struggling, ever-changing, incorrigibly erratic "Federated
Russia"! But
practically only yesterday, that staid old Soviet
Union! For 70 long years under the Soviets,
icy stronghold of that dull old Socialist
Realism!
& Yet in l957, following the death in l956 of Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin & during a brief
period of so-called "Thaw," Escaping The
Commissars! (excitedly, unfolding fresh as
a daisy, article from '67 again reminds me)
The brave, the bold, the dazzlingly jazzy, the critically-acclaimed upstart
"Taganka Troupe"
performed for a couple of precedent-shattering
evenings
To top off leaden-footed, official Moscow meetings!
--Introducing to Conservative, astonished & ominously frowning audiences
of much-bemedalled
Generals clad in full-dress uniforms, Government
Officials sporting baggy, pin-striped
tuxedoes, Collective-Farm Deputies garbed
in spotless work-clothes, & other such
dubious representatives of "The People"
Sketches incorporating of all things, nothing less than Western, "decadent,"
Avant-Garde style
Cabaret Theater!
--Daringly, bursting the bonds of the usual, dancing unconcernedly in the
midst of the obvious,
Spangled men black top-hats & tights, strutting girls in white top-hats,
glistening
white silk shorts & highly polished, high-heeled
patent-leather shoes
All carrying shiny black plastic Capitalistic rhinestone-studded canes, like
"hoofers" straight from
Broadway, added a note of risk--& light-hearted
Poetry--
Over groaning after-dinner banquet-tables, to ponderous, so-called "serious"
Soviet-style discussions
Regarding only "Kilowatt Hours," regarding only "Tractor-Quotas"...
Oh brave (&--as soon became clear--also foolhardy) Taganka Troupe! Attacked
in official
newspapers, critically-forsaken &
fallen-out-of-favor, locked up only a
few months later in the l958-model Soviet
refrigerator
To play Chekhov, & minor Chekhov only, before various indifferent
collective-farm families,
huddled in huts in lower Ukrainia
You all but disappeared from the world, suddenly & almost totally
Like faithless love, like yesterday's newspapers--The New York Times not
excluded--
To get quietly lost, like so many other really exceptional things, in the
trash-can of
everyday & ordinary & mostly temporary
human history
--That "history" with only scant follow-up; that "history," sometimes, without
even any memory...
--So that suddenly, only a few decades later, during politically "New
Conservative" times
here in our own land
Instead of reading for example, enthusiastic praise of phenomena like
you, Taganka
Troupe, & your sassy, outrageous, indomitable
spirit
In highly influential, politically-attuned & alas also politically-influenced
places such as
The N.Y. Times Sunday Entertainment Section,
& Even in the so-called purely "intellectual" journals--Academic
Quarterlies
& literary periodicals too!--
What we had to read all too often, all during the later l980's &
continuing even into the '90's
Regarding theater, the visual arts, literature generally--& yes sometimes
also Poetry--
Were all those tedious, straight-laced, esthetically recidivist, chic-ly
"New Conservative"
articles & reviews, replete with critical
sermons & tirades
On "The Avant-Garde Betrayal"; on "The New Formalism"; & on "The Death
of
Modernism" & on "Post-Modernism & Its
Rise"
--So that it may even have seemed to some readers that it was all just a
mistake, yes perhaps
all just one great big mistake
Including you, brave Taganka Troupe!--& while our own bear-footed,
trend-copying,
intellectually trigger-happy would-be cultural
commissars were at it
The entire Experimental, revolutionary American l960's as well
Was they suggested, all just a bust & one great big regrettable error!
Oh brave (& daring!) Taganka Troupe! Like a natural part of our inmost
hearts beating
throughout recorded history, but nonetheless
every now & then declared somehow
"superannuated"
You still drift in & out of my memory--whether or not perfectly remembered;
you live by
impulse in the main, instead of by name... like
a lock of hair
That turns up, years later, in an anonymous Valentine
From a sender whose name was once well-remembered; you stand suspended,
almost
in mid-air, crazy as a frontiersman's rifle hung
on a wall in some suburban living-room, or a
bar in some dreary, otherwise work-a-day American
"Levittown"... a sign of Lost Life....
Still, I continue to dream of you! & With Love, I think of those brilliantly
spangled, outrageously
radiant, resplendently shining dancing men, each
brazen gesture apparently
trapped forever by the Soviet chill & their
Government-Issue greatcoats;
& I think also of those girls, once so resplendent in their white top-hats
& their silk shorts,
also declared so suddenly, so superannuatedly
"scandalous"
--& I think above all of the leader of that Troupe in his top-hat, leading
all the rest with his
rhinestone-studded cane, who dared to tell them
all there once (& also all of
us for all time--or at least, for as long
as we ourselves are still truly free to listen)
That bravest, most daring & sometimes hardly imaginable thing:
To wit: That Our Own Lives could be (couldn't they?)
Just A Little Bit More
A
M
U
S
I
N
G ? !
[ l986 ]
[ Postscript: l987 ]
This poem is affectionately dedicated to the good health of the
Director of "The Taganka Troupe,"
Yuri Lyubimov--who according to a brief notice The New York Times
in l987
emigrated in '87 from The Soviet Union to the U.S.A.
"Of The
C o
l o
r f
u l
'Taganka Troupe' In Soviet Russia, l957" was
first published on videotape,
as part of a videotaped reading given in l987 at invitation of The Library
of Congress.
A considerably revised version was published in the literary magazine
Lips in l996, © Michael Benedikt l996.
This Webversion © 2001 Michael Benedikt. (Revision enhances versions
of this poem which appeared here in later '00 & earlier in '01).
From manuscript-in-progress entitled OF:
NOTES RE (1) POST -'86 CAREER OF TAGANKA DIRECTOR LYUBIMOV & (2) THIS POEM
(1) Taganka Troupe Director:
Like many of the more creative spirits in the former Soviet
Union, Yuri Lyubimov, a leading Russian theater Director, was a victim of
artistic repression. Briefly an emigrée to USA, in '87/8 Yuri Lyubimov
directed a play based on Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime & Punishment' at the
Arena Theatre in Washington D.C. (Many of Lyubimov's productions are based
on Russian classics). Under the more liberal regime of then-Russian-President
Gorbachev, he returned to his homeland in l989. Lyubimov (or Lubimov, as
his name's sometimes spelled), is regarded internationally as a leading exponent
of the experimental traditions of great Russian Director V. Meyerhold. Meyerhold,
like many Soviet artists, died during WWII in one of the notorious Soviet
camps for dissidents. In l957 too, it took particular courage (artistic &
other)
to propose theatre in the Soviet context which took esthetic risks &
which was also (of all things) pleasureable and even playful.
Under Lyubimov's Directorship, T. Troupe flourishes afresh & continues
its controversial career at Taganka Theatre in Moscow
today.
(Taganka, incidentally, is the name of district
in Moscow where T. Theater 's located).
(2) Poem: Even today (9/00),
it strikes this writer as an ironical coincidence indeed that the newspaper
clipping which inspired this poem came to light during the l980's "New
Conservative" Reagan years--years which also saw the revival in the USA of
"New Conservative" criticism of the Arts; and of rising trends toward outright
Arts censorship which still continue today. As we see it, such trends represent
an ominous mix of art & politics which--in contemporary context--threatens
freedom of speech & perhaps especially free speech on The
Web.--MB
Yuri Lyubimov, Taganka Troupe Director, in '87
O T H E R L I N K S R E T A G A N K A
THEN & NOW
A few
basics re Taganka & Its Director
at Theatre w/Anatoly
Includes info on T. Troupe 1960's to Present
(Updated
URL)
Lyubimov Plays Pushkin: ''Taganka-Style Eugene
Onegin" at Russian Journal
A Taganka Theatre Company performance based on A. Pushkin in the
l990's
New: Lyubimov
in Avignon: Marat/Sade as a
musical (!) . The Moscow
Times
Adaptation of "Theatre of The Absurd" & "Black Humor" Classic
drama by Peter Weiss. (Article re Festival d'Avignon '00 by Larisa
Doctorow)
New:
Taganka
at 5th Annual Yale Arts & Ideas
Festival
Yale Festival Dates in '01: 6/14-6/30. Taganka Troupe performed
6/26-6/30. (Further Info: 1-888-ART-IDEA)
4/01 Yale Ad: "This year's festival boasts the
strongest selection of theatrical performances in the event's history...one
of Russia's preeminent directors,
Yuri Lyubimov, and his company, the Taganka Theatre, will perform an original
musical version of Peter Weiss' "Marat/Sade"--
a 'play within a play' in which inmates at an insane asylum, under the direction
of the Marquis de Sade, reenact the death of Jean-Paul Marat."
(Hit Back Button To Return To This Site)
[Complete Bio: Who's Who in America, Who's Who in World, Who's Who in Entertainment, etc.]
Many of Benedikt's books are now represented in one form or another at various websites
Michael Benedikt has published 5 collections of poetry: The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980); & with Wesleyan University Press, Night Cries (prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, 1971); Sky (l970); & The Body (l968). His work appears in 60+ anthologies of US poetry. He's co-Editor with theatre critic George E. Wellwarth of 3 anthologies of Surrealist & Surrealist-influenced plays from 'The Theater of The Absurd' published in the l960's by E.P. Dutton: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada & Surrealism (an anthology from Jarry to Eugene Ionesco et al); Post-War German Theatre (Kaiser to Peter Weiss); and Modern Spanish Theatre (Valle-Inclan to Garcia Lorca). He's also translator of many plays in those volumes. He's Editor of Theatre Experiment (Doubleday, l968)--an antho. of anti-naturalistic stagecraft in the U.S. from Thornton Wilder tp the "Happening." Other anthologies include The Poetry of Surrealism (Little, Brown, l974) & The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976). Benedikt is a former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review (l974-78). His editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology (Norton, l990). He's currently a Contributing Editor for The Americn Poetry Review and The Prose Poem: An International Journal. Benedikt has taught in English/Creative Writing Departments at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar College/s; and at Boston University. He's read from his poetry at many colleges, universities & bookstores around the USA--most recently at several Barnes & Noble 'Superstores' in the NY Metro area. Benedikt lives in Manhattan, NYC.
E-mail at benedit2@aol.com
A B O U T
'The
Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net'
Article at About.com re Background of Benedikt's
Websites.
(A selection of MB links also appears at end of article, posted by
About.com 4/99).
Benedikt
Pages at Academy of American Poets
Includes complete bio. & a poem from each of Benedikt's published
books except for Mole Notes,
2 poems from which can be found at URL given just below for Theatre, Film
& TV Poems. (Posted by Academy 5/99)
OTHER POEMS RE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD &'SHOWBIZ'
Theatre, Film
& TV Poems including 3 new short poems, a poem
from OF: called 'Ringo & Rita'; & 2 prose poems incl.
one in praise of Mae West.
Also in the mix: Descriptions/Tables of Contents of Benedikt's 3
anthologies of 20th-Century Avant-Garde European Drama
(Anti-Naturalistic plays from France, Germany & Spain--some translated
by Benedikt).
With Agent Contact Info. for obtaining performance rights.
OTHER POEMS FROM OF:
The Thesaurus and Other New Verse, with
several other selections from OF:
-- the manuscript-in-progress (for 20 years!) of which 'Of The Colorful
Taganka Troupe' is a part.
Above site includes a complete listing of Benedikt
URLs
New 5/01: Above site also has a page of early poems from OF: called 3 Poems in Praise of Peace
OTHER SITES
New Listing: Mini-Site with 'The Kapos,' first in a cycle of 3 poems-in-progress re WWII & the impact of War on civilians
E-Zine
Thermopylae, with 2 poems from OF:- -'American Vibrations'
& 'Of Debauchery'
Also, Interview in the
'Writers Talk
About 2000' series re Literature, Technology & The Web.
