National Theatres in a Changing Europe (Studies in International Performance)

National Theatres in a Changing Europe Edited by

S.E. Wilmer

Studies in International Performance Published in association with the International Federation of Theatre Research General Editors: Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations. Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces ‘Culture’ which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats ‘Performance’ as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations. Titles include: Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case (editors) STAGING INTERNATIONAL FEMINISMS Christopher B. Balme PACIFIC PERFORMANCES Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo PERFORMANCE AND COSMOPOLITICS Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia Judith Hamera DANCING COMMUNITIES Performance, Difference, and Connection in the Global City Alan Read THEATRE, INTIMACY & ENGAGEMENT The Last Human-Venue Joanne Tompkins UNSETTLING SPACE Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre S.E. Wilmer (editor) NATIONAL THEATRES IN A CHANGING EUROPE Forthcoming title: Adrian Kear THEATRE AND EVENT

Studies in International Performance Series Standing Order ISBN 1–4039–4435–0 (hardback) 1–4039–4436–9 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

National Theatres in a Changing Europe Edited by

S.E. Wilmer

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © S.E. Wilmer 2008 Individual chapters © contributors 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-52109-4 ISBN-10: 0-230-52109-6

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 17

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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Contents Series Editors’ Preface

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Editor’s Preface

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Notes on Contributors

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Introduction S.E. Wilmer

PART A: 1

1

BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW

The Development of National Theatres in Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries S.E. Wilmer

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National Theatres: Then and Now Marvin Carlson

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The National Stage and the Naturalized House: (Trans)National Legitimation in Modern Europe Loren Kruger

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Towards a History of National Theatres in Europe Bruce McConachie

PART B: FORMATION, FUNCTION, LANGUAGE ISSUES AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL I

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Origins 5

A Window to the West: Russian Imperial Theatres Julia Listengarten

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The Abbey Opens: A First Night Revisited Ben Levitas

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Language Issues

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The Development of Norway’s National Theatres Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

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Justification as National Throughout Changing Times: The National Theatre of Finland Pirkko Koski v

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Contents

Creating and Dismantling the National Theatre in Divided Belgium Frank Peeters

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Governmental and Ideological Control

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National on Compulsion: The Moscow Art Theatre Laurence Senelick

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Italy: The Fancy of a National Theatre? Patricia Gaborik

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PART C: NEW FUNCTIONS AND STRUCTURES IN A CHANGING EUROPE I

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Western Europe

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Proliferation and Differentiation of National Theatres in France David Whitton

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A National Theatre Decentralized: Sweden’s Three-and-a-half National Theatres Rikard Hoogland and Willmar Sauter

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Aspects of National Theatres in Germany after 1945 Thomas Irmer

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The National Theatre and Civic Responsibility in the British Isles Michael Coveney

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Central and Eastern Europe

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Bulgarian National Theatre ‘Ivan Vazov’: Traditionally Non-traditional Kalina Stefanova

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The Disappearing Balkans: National Theatres and Geopolitics Barbara Sušec Michieli

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Inadequate Subsidy and a Market Economy in the Baltic Countries 204 Edgaras Klivis

PART D: CHALLENGES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 19

National Theatres Undermined by the Withering of the Nation-State Dragan Klaic

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Contents

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The Role of National Theatres in an Age of Globalization Janelle Reinelt

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Select Bibliography of English Language Sources

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Index

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Series Editors’ Preface In 2003, the current International Federation for Theatre Research President, Janelle Reinelt, pledged the organization to expand the outlets for scholarly publication available to the membership, and to make scholarly achievement one of the main goals and activities of the Federation under her leadership. In 2004, joined by Vice-President for Research and Publications Brian Singleton, they signed a contract with Palgrave Macmillan for a new book series, ‘Studies in International Performance.’ Since the inauguration of the series, it has become increasingly urgent for performance scholars to expand their disciplinary horizons to include the comparative study of performances across national, cultural, social and political borders. This is necessary not only in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency to limit performance paradigms to those familiar in our home countries, but also in order to be engaged in creating new performance scholarship that takes account of and embraces the complexities of transnational cultural production, the new media, and the economic and social consequences of increasingly international forms of artistic expression. Comparative studies can value both the specifically local and the broadly conceived global forms of performance practices, histories and social formations. Comparative aesthetics can challenge the limitations of perception and current artistic knowledges. In formalizing the work of the Federation’s members through rigorous and innovative scholarship, we hope to contribute to an ever-changing project of knowledge creation.

International Federation for Theatre Research Fédération International pour la Recherche Théâtrale

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Editor’s Preface This book developed from a symposium on National Theatres of Europe held at Trinity College Dublin in March 2005. Many of the chapters for the book were first presented in an earlier form at that meeting. Some of the contributions, however, were commissioned subsequently. I would like to express my thanks to Dr Elizabeth Mannion for helping with the preparations for the meeting, and Professors Brian Singleton and Janelle Reinelt for their advice in developing the concept for this book. Finally I would also like to thank Mary Caulfield for assistance in preparing the manuscript. S.E. WILMER Trinity College Dublin

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Notes on Contributors Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, the ATHE Career Achievement Award, the ASTR Distinguished Scholarship Award, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and the Calloway Prize. He is the founding editor of the journal Western European Stages. Among his books are The Theatre of the French Revolution (1966), Goethe and the Weimar Theatre (1978), Theories of the Theatre (1984), Places of Performance (1989), Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life (1990), Performance: A Critical Introduction (1996), Voltaire and the Theatre of the Eighteenth Century (1998), The Haunted Stage (2001) and Speaking in Tongues (2006). Michael Coveney has been a London theatre critic for over thirty years. He read English at Worcester College, Oxford, and edited Plays and Players magazine in the mid 1970s. He was staff theatre critic on the Financial Times, the Observer and the Daily Mail. He is currently contributing to Prospect Magazine, the New Statesman and the Observer and is contributing editor of whatsonstage.com and theatre critic of the first post on-line magazine. His books include a history of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and critical biographies of the actress Maggie Smith, the filmmaker Mike Leigh and the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Patricia Gaborik obtained her Ph.D in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. She has published essays on modern Italian theatre in Metamorphoses, Western European Stages, and Modern Drama. Currently teaching and working as a translator in Rome, she is preparing a monograph on playwright Massimo Bontempelli as well as English translations of three of his plays. Rikard Hoogland is working as Teacher and Researcher at the Department of Theatre Studies, Stockholm University. He obtained his doctorate in 2005, with his thesis topic The Play about Theatre Policy. The Swedish Regional Theatre Structure from State Initiative to Local Reality. He has been Editor in Chief for 15 years of the Swedish theatre journal Teatertidningen. Thomas Irmer has taught at Leipzig University (1992–96) and at the Freie Universität Berlin, John F. Kennedy Institut since 2003. From 1998 to 2003 he was Editor in Chief of the monthly Theater der Zeit, and from 2004 to 2006 Dramaturgical Advisor for the international theatre season at Berliner xii

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Festspiele. His books include Frank Castorfs Volksbühne (2003), Die Bühnenrepublik – Theater in der DDR (2003), and Luk Perceval – Theater und Ritual (2005). He is the author and co-director of two documentary films on theatre, Die Bühnenrepublik (2003) and Europa in Stücken (2004), and a regular contributor to Theater Heute (Germany), Didaskalia (Poland), Shakespeare (Norway), and Maska (Slovenia). Dragan Klaic, a Permanent Fellow of Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, teaches arts and cultural policies at Leiden University. He is the initiator of the European Festivals Research Project, as well as a writer, lecturer, researcher, advisor and frequent conference speaker, especially on contemporary performing arts, cultural policy and international cultural cooperation. He is the author of several books, most recently Europe as a Cultural Project (2005), of many articles, and of contributions to over 40 edited books. Edgaras Klivis is a Lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. His recent publications are ‘Blood and Soil: Virtual Body of the Nation on Stage’ in The Human Body – a Universal Sign, edited by Wiesna MondKozlowska (2005); and ‘(Un)mediated: Voice-Scapes of Nationalism’ in Art History and Criticism: Theatre and Society: Problems and Perspectives (2006). Pirkko Koski is Professor and Head of the Department of Theatre Research in the Institute of Art Research at the University of Helsinki. She has been a member of the executive committee of the International Federation of Theatre Research since 1995, serving as Vice-President in 1999–2002. In addition to scholarly articles, she has published several books in these fields, e.g. Teatterinjohtaja ja aika (1992), Kaikessa mukana. Hella Wuolijoki ja hänen näytelmänsä (2000), Strindberg ja suomalainen teatteri (2005) and The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre (with S.E. Wilmer, 2006). She has also edited two volumes of scholarly articles translated into Finnish, and Stages of Chaos: The Drama of Post-war Finland and Humour and Humanity. Contemporary Plays from Finland (both with S.E. Wilmer, 2005, 2006). Loren Kruger is the author of The National Stage (1992), Drama of South Africa (1999) and Post-Imperial Brecht (2004) and the translator of The Institutions of Art by Peter and Christa Burger (1992) and Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture by Patrice Pavis (1992). She teaches at the University of Chicago. Ben Levitas is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. He is author of The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Cultural Politics 1890–1916 (2002), which was awarded the 2003 Michael J. Durkan Prize for a Book on Language or Literature by the American Conference for Irish Studies, and is co-editor, with Richard Cave, of Irish Theatre in England (2007).

xiv Notes on Contributors

Julia Listengarten is Associate Professor of Theatre and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Florida. Her translation of the Russian absurdist play Christmas at the Ivanovs premiered on Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company and was included in the anthology Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890–1950, edited by B. Cardullo and R. Knopf (2001). Her book Russian Tragifarce was published in 2000, and her recent articles include ‘Translating Politics and Performing Absurdity’ and ‘Jewish Comedy and the Art of Affirmation.’ She is currently working on the collection Theater of the Avant-Garde: 1950–2000. Bruce McConachie is Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. His major books include Interpreting the Theatrical Past (with Thomas Postlewait, 1989), Melodramatic Formations (1992) and American Theatre in the Culture of the Cold War (2003). Recently, McConachie has co-authored with three other historians Theatre Histories: An Introduction (2006) and co-edited Performance and Cognition (with H. Elizabeth Hart, 2006). He co-edits Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, a book series for Palgrave Macmillan. Frank Peeters is Professor and Head of Department at the University of Antwerp and the University College of Antwerp, where he teaches theatre history and historiography. Since 1994 he has been a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) and counsellor to the Minister of Culture for the Flemish theatre. He is the author of Jan Oscar de Gruyter en het Vlaamse Volkstoneel 1920–1924 (1989), co-editor of Bij Open Doek: Liber Amicorum Carlos Tindemans (1995), and Een theatergeschiedenis der Nederlanden (1996). He is also co-author of Van de Dronkaerd tot het Kouwe Kind: 150 jaar Antwerpse theatergeschiedenis (2003) and De speler en de strop: tweehonderd jaar theaterin Gent (2006). Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick in the UK. She is President of the International Federation for Theatre Research and former Vice President for Research and Publications of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) She is also a former editor of Theatre Journal. Her books include After Brecht: British Epic Theatre (1996), Crucibles of Crisis: Performance and Social Change (1996), Critical Theory and Performance (with Joseph Roach, 1992, 2007), The Performance of Power (with Sue-Ellen Case, 1991) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (with Elaine Aston, 2000). Willmar Sauter is Professor of Theatre Studies at Stockholm University. His areas of research are reception processes, Swedish theatre history, and theories of the theatrical event. The latter are summarized in the book The

Notes on Contributors xv

Theatrical Event (2000) and expanded upon in the IFTR Working Group publication Theatrical Events – Borders, Dynamics, Frames (2004). Laurence Senelick is Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University and American Society for Theatre Research Distinguished Scholar. His latest book is A Historical Dictionary of Russian Theatre (2007). A recipient of the St George Medal of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, he has published widely on Russian theatre. His writing includes the awardwinning The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance (2000); translations of the complete plays of Anton Chekhov, Serf Actor: The Life and Art of Mikhail Shchepkin (1984), Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet (1982), National Theatre in Northern and Eastern Europe (1991), and Russian Comedy of the Nikolaian Era (1997). Kirsten Shepherd-Barr is a University Lecturer in English and Modern Drama and Tutorial Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. She is the author of Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus To Copenhagen (2006) and Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890–1900 (1997), as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals. Her research interests are in theatre and modernism, theatre and science, and Scandinavian literature. She received her BA in English from Yale University, her D.Phil from Oxford, and held a Fulbright Grant to study Nordic literature and languages at the University of Oslo 1990–1991. Kalina Stefanova is a theatre critic and author/editor of 11 books, three of which are in English and were published in New York and London: Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages? (1994), Eastern European Theatre After the Iron Curtain (2000), Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages? (2000). Her articles have been published in 21 languages. For two mandates she served as Vice President of the International Association of Theatre Critics. Currently she is Associate Professor at the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia, and Director, Symposiums of the IATC. Dr Stefanova’s first fiction book Ann’s Dwarves brought comparisons with The Little Prince and is due to be published in Macedonia and South Korea. Barbara Sušec Michieli is Assistant Professor of Theatre History at the University of Ljubljana and Head of the Centre for Theatre and Film Studies. She has published articles in The Drama Review, Maska and other scholarly journals. Her recent works include a book Marija Vera – Igralka v dinamiˇcnem labirintu kultur (Maria Vera – An Actress in a Dynamic Labyrinth of Cultures, 2006), and the essay ’Nationalism, Tradition, and Transition in Theatre Historiography in Slovenia’ in S.E. Wilmer (ed.), Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories (2004).

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David Whitton teaches theatre and film at Lancaster University where he is Professor and Head of European Languages and Cultures. His main area of research is French theatre from the seventeenth century to the present day. His publications include Stage Directors in Modern France (1989), Molière: Don Juan (1995 in the ‘Plays in Production’ series), monographs on Le Misanthrope (1993), and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1992), and numerous articles on texts in production. Currently he is writing a history of theatre in France. He is joint Secretary General of the International Federation for Theatre Research. S.E. Wilmer is an Associate Professor of Drama and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities (2002) and co-author with Pirkko Koski of The Dynamic World of Finnish Theatre (2006). He has edited Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories (2004), Portraits of Courage: Plays by Finnish Women (1997), and Beckett in Dublin (1992). He has also co-edited Humour and Humanity: Contemporary Plays from Finland (2006), Stages of Chaos: Post-war Finnish Drama (2005), Theatre, History and National Identities (2001), and Theatre Worlds in Motion (1998).

Introduction S. E. Wilmer

National Theatres such as the Comédie-Française in Paris, the Burgtheater in Vienna, and the Royal Dramaten in Stockholm, evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as royally established institutions to entertain the elite with plays, operas, and ballets that reflected their aristocratic values. With the advent of the Hamburg National Theatre in 1767, a new concept developed of a municipal theatre to educate the bourgeoisie and help instil national values. In the nineteenth century, National Theatres, such as the Norwegian, Czech, and Finnish theatres, emerged in nations under the control of large empires as a means to foster national consciousness in conjunction with wider cultural and political nationalist concerns. In the twentieth century, National Theatres continued to proliferate and change their functions, as empires disappeared, nation-states were established, and fascist and Soviet eras of control were succeeded by increasing democratization, multiculturalism, balkanization and globalization. In the twenty-first century National Theatres are facing enormous challenges as they seek to adapt to changing social, cultural, and economic conditions in Europe. They frequently suffer from being located in large inflexible spaces, and being subject to cumbersome organizations operating an expensive repertory system with numerous technical staff and an ensemble company of actors (and in some cases opera choruses, ballet companies and orchestras). Consuming a disproportionate slice of their national governments’ subsidy for culture, National Theatres are often expected to represent the apex in production standards and artistic creativity within the country, as well as reflecting the legacy of national theatre traditions. In a competitive economic climate with numerous alternatives for entertainment and diversion, National Theatres seek new ways of attracting an audience, responding to the interests of culturally diverse populations, creating transnational and intercultural links, and trying to balance their budgets. National Theatres in a Changing Europe examines the various ways in which National Theatres have formed and evolved over time, and the different functions they acquired depending on the nature of the political regimes 1

2 Introduction

and social and cultural circumstances in which they were situated. It also highlights the difficulties that these institutions encounter today in an environment where nationalism and national identity are increasingly contested by global, transnational, regional, pluralist and local agendas and where economic forces create conflicting demands in a competitive marketplace. The book analyses the criteria by which National Theatres acquire their names, their place in the urban geography, and their status, and considers how they legitimize themselves in the eyes of the government, the decisionmakers, the critics and the general public. Furthermore, it demonstrates how some National Theatres have been used to formulate and revise notions of national identity, and it also reveals who has been included and excluded in such formulations, and how nineteenth-century notions of homogeneous national identity have been exposed by the reality of multilingual and polyethnic populations, and diverse religious groups. National Theatres in a Changing Europe assesses the historic function of National Theatres in assembling an audience that can be regarded as a potential microcosm of the nation (or the elite of that nation) in an active forum for national debate. It also examines the role of the national government as a source of finance, legitimacy and control of National Theatres as well as a vehicle for promoting their activities at home and abroad. It considers some of the more egregious abuses of governmental and ideological control of National Theatres, as in the Soviet case. It also examines the ongoing proliferation of National Theatres in many countries of Europe (with recent developments in Spain, Hungary, Scotland and Italy), and the current desire to fulfil a variety of purposes and to address many distinct audiences (as in France, Sweden, and the Balkans). It interrogates the position of National Theatres as symbols of national cultural authority in Central and Eastern European nation-states, which evolved from under Soviet influence only to see their sovereignty threatened by a new (Western, capitalist) European identity. Thus, it considers the role of the National Theatres in negotiating between the residual values of the nation-state, and the emerging values of a pan-European culture. The book discusses the status of National Theatres as the flagship of theatre culture, receiving the highest state subsidies, and setting the standard by which other theatre companies within the nation are measured. It also considers the role of National Theatres as reflecting the cultural achievement of the nation at home and as serving as an advertisement for the national culture abroad. Moreover, it investigates the effects of the tourist market, and the national and international touring circuit on their work, particularly the international festivals that they house or visit and that act as a showcase for national as well as transnational products. It contrasts their position as museums or heritage sites for national classics, with their function as initiators of new domestic and international work by themselves or in co-productions with other companies at home and abroad. At the same

S. E. Wilmer

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time, it assesses the structural difficulties that they face which often inhibit experimentation, flexibility and imaginative creativity, and lead to their work being upstaged by that of less constricted theatre companies and artists. The order of the book is roughly chronological to provide a sense of structural transformation coinciding with political and cultural change over the centuries. It is divided into four Parts. Part A presents an overview of the development, legitimization and characteristics of National Theatres in Europe. The first chapter discusses the historical development of National Theatres in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as imperial enterprises or as nationalist organizations in emerging nations. In the second chapter, Marvin Carlson tracks the continuation of this process into the twentieth century, with the phenomenon of National Theatres spreading from Europe to other continents, and with National Theatres continuing to be established today in numerous countries both in Europe and elsewhere. Loren Kruger analyses the legitimization process of National Theatres in society. She explains how National Theatres become recognized and accepted as representative of the nation by their audiences, critics, scholars, the state, and the general populace. Bruce McConachie evaluates typologies of National Theatres, asking what characteristics should ideally prevail in a theatre for it to be called a National Theatre. Part B is primarily historical in character, focusing on inaugural moments, linguistic and ethnic problems, and the dangers of excessive governmental and ideological control. The first five chapters investigate the intentions, problems, and social context for forming National Theatres in individual nations in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and consider the relevance of these factors in the twenty-first century. Julia Listengarten examines the opposing notions of national identity in Russia in the nineteenth century, with the Alexandrinsky Theatre aspiring to Western models of civilized behaviour and the Maly Theatre looking to Russia itself for native representations of national character. Her chapter also considers residual traces of that polarity in Russian theatres today. Ben Levitas analyses the opening of the Irish National Theatre and the significance of its initial repertory. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Pirkko Koski and Frank Peeters reveal the problems of National Theatres in nation-states with two (or more) language groups vying for national hegemony, and the ways in which the National Theatres in Norway, Finland and Belgium have struggled with such language issues up to the present day. In the second section of this Part, Laurence Senelick and Patricia Gaborik consider occasions in the past when governments have manipulated and controlled the policies and ideological output of National Theatres, particularly in the 1930s. Senelick discusses the Soviet state’s relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre, while Gaborik assesses the efforts to establish a National Theatre in Italy during Mussolini’s fascist regime, as well as the more recent attempts in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

4 Introduction

Part C discusses the transformation of National Theatres since the 1960s, and considers their roles and relevance today. In the first half, which considers developments in Western Europe, David Whitton and Rikard Hoogland and Willmar Sauter document the decentralization, devolution, democratization and proliferation of National Theatres in France and Sweden. Thomas Irmer discusses the impediments to a German National Theatre after the Second World War and the current debate regarding the federal role in subsidizing national institutions in Berlin. Michael Coveney argues that London’s Royal National Theatre, in promoting new socially engaged writing, acts as a venue with civic responsibility. The second section of Part C reviews changes in Central and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kalina Stefanova discusses the continuing importance of the Bulgarian National Theatre as a place of experimentation and excellence despite political and economic changes since 1989. Barbara Sušec Michieli traces the proliferation of National Theatres in the Balkans, amidst ethnic and linguistic rivalries, territorial transformations, and conflicting local, national and transnational governmental structures. Edgaras Klivis surveys the rapid transformation of Lithuania from Soviet control to a brief period of national sovereignty, to entry into (and subjection to) the European Union. He considers the financial and structural problems resulting from the legacy of a Soviet employment system and the introduction of a market economy and limitations in government subsidy that have created major difficulties for the recently established National Theatre in Vilnius. In Part D the authors discuss various challenges in the twenty-first century and ways in which National Theatres might operate in the future. Dragan Klaic reviews some of the structural, financial, and repertory problems of National Theatres and suggests the possibilities of intercultural and culturally diverse practices in the future. Janelle Reinelt concludes by assessing some of the implications of a changing Europe, where transnational agendas compete with national concerns, where polyethnicism and multilingualism are displacing assertions of homogeneity, and where National Theatres and their artists and productions spend as much time abroad as at home. National Theatres in a Changing Europe engages with current debates about national identity, nationalism, and cultural formation as well as about the effects of multiculturalism, European expansion and globalization on national institutions in Europe. While it is difficult to generalize about National Theatres because there are so many of them (approximately 35 in the Balkans alone) with such diverse practices and social contexts, the book will help to clarify some of the common problems facing National Theatres today and various possibilities for their survival. Among the important questions it addresses are: To what extent are questions of nation still being evoked in National Theatres? Are National Theatres wanted by the government, the elite, or by the general public? Who is the audience for the National Theatre: the whole nation, the bourgeoisie, the capital city, the regions, the elite?

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How do National Theatres try to speak for the nation? What is the significance of language? What role do National Theatres serve in the aspirations of national cultural validity both internally and vis à vis other nations? How do they respond to and represent cultural diversity? And finally, to what extent are problems in the National Theatres in Central and Eastern Europe similar to those in Western Europe?

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Part A Background and Overview

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1 The Development of National Theatres in Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries S. E. Wilmer

Since the seventeenth century, hundreds of National Theatres have been established throughout Europe and the process is still going on with new National Theatres being created in the last decade, for example, in Spain, Hungary, Slovenia, and Scotland. In this chapter I want to review the general movement that led to the creation of National Theatres, the ideologies that underlay it, and some of the processes inherent in it. I want to look first at their origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then consider more closely the nineteenth-century developments that were allied to the rise of nationalism. The first point to make is that each National Theatre was unique in that it reflected a specific originating moment, location, set of goals, language, history, and mythology, as well as the idiosyncratic beliefs of its individual founding members. At the same time one can point to some distinctive patterns. There were two general types of theatre that were to develop into National Theatres during the early period. The first type was established by stable autocratic governments, e.g. the Comédie-Française in Paris (1680), the Burgtheater in Vienna (1741), the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen (1748), and the Royal Dramatic Theatre (‘Dramaten’) in Stockholm (1788). The second type arose in association with nationalist movements in emerging states under the yoke of foreign rule, such as the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen, the National Theatre in Prague, the National Theatre in Helsinki, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, etc. In addition, there are National Theatres that fall outside these two patterns, such as in Germany where the National Theatre in Hamburg, which was established in 1767, provided an interesting but short-lived experiment of a citizens’ theatre but where later attempts at National Theatres in the late eighteenth century evolved into court theatres. In Poland the National Theatre followed both patterns: it was first created in 1765 under the Polish monarchy, but after Poland was carved up between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the Polish National Theatre took on the role of a 9

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National Theatres in 18th and 19th Century Europe

National Theatre within an emerging nation, while Poles tried to regain their sovereignty. Meanwhile, some major countries in Europe such as the Netherlands never created National Theatres, and others such as Italy are still trying to establish them.

Imperial theatres The Comédie-Française was founded by Louis XIV in 1680 in Paris to stage comedies and tragedies in French, primarily those of Molière, Racine, and Corneille. It received a subsidy from the state to perform both for the court and for the public. Up until the French Revolution, the theatre held a virtual monopoly on performing French plays in Paris and the actors were shareholders in the enterprise. Following the Revolution, its name changed briefly to the Théâtre de la Nation, and following the arrest of its loyalist actors and their subsequent release, the company reunited in a theatre on the Rue de Richelieu where it has remained until today as a state-subsidized theatre, performing canonical French plays. The Burgtheater in Vienna, founded by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in 1741, was initially established as a court theatre located adjacent to the imperial palace, performing mostly in Italian and French (before later adopting a German repertory). The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen developed more rapidly in the direction of a National Theatre. Built on land provided by the Danish king in 1748, the Royal Theatre broke with the tradition of hiring French and Italian theatre companies to perform for the court by engaging Danish actors to stage new Danish plays, particularly those by the prolific Ludvig Holberg, in addition to popular French plays in translation. By the middle of the 1750s there were already twenty-five Holberg plays in their repertory.1 In addition to creating a domestic repertory, the theatre grew further away from being a court theatre when the king handed it over to the municipality to operate from 1750. The company could not simply perform for the court but had to survive financially by attracting public audiences. Although the king would pay off the company’s debts and resume financial responsibility for the company in 1770, and although the dramatic performances would have to compete with opera and ballet productions in the same building, the Royal Theatre had moved quite far in the direction of becoming a National Theatre. The German writer J. E. Schlegel, who was resident in Copenhagen in the middle of the eighteenth century, was very impressed with the conception of this theatre. He felt that it might serve as a model for what could be done in German-speaking lands to encourage German language plays and the notion of a National Theatre there. In 1747 he wrote that the ‘purpose of theatre is the embroidering and improvement of the mind of a whole nation… A good theatre serves a whole nation.’2 Instead of touring groups of ‘unworthy tramps,’3 he favoured a standing theatre guided by an interest in the broad history and dramaturgy

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of theatre as well as in ‘the customs and the special characteristics of one’s nation.’4 When his ideas were published two decades later, leading figures in the German-speaking theatre such as Ekhof, Lessing, Goethe and Schiller took up the call for a German National Theatre. However, the fragmentation of the German-speaking population over 300 principalities, dukedoms, and free cities hindered the effort to create a unified enterprise. Without a single cultural capital, as with Paris, it was not clear where such a theatre might be positioned, and consequently various German-speaking cities became potential sites for a German National Theatre in the late eighteenth century.

Hamburg National Theatre A National Theatre was established in 1767 in the Comödienhaus in Hamburg by a consortium of actors and merchants, with seating for 1600 people. Johann Friedrich Löwen, who became its artistic director, oversaw the change in the role of the actor from that of a wandering player to an ‘educator of the nation’.5 The National Theatre maintained an international repertoire of German, French and English plays (all performed in German), but although the French plays outnumbered the others, it tried to create a distinctively German theatre style and to produce German plays, many of them new but often imitating foreign models.6 Lessing’s comedy Minna von Barnhelm (1767) received the most performances. It indirectly called for German unity by representing the need for reconciliation between the opposing states of Prussia and Saxony during the Seven Years’ War. Furthermore, it emphasized the importance of German culture, as was particularly evident in a scene where Minna von Barnhelm, a German lady, in response to a Frenchman who asks her to speak in French in her own country, says, ‘Sir, in France I would try to speak it. But why should I do so here?’7 The Hamburg National Theatre avoided the classic French style of Racine and Corneille (though Voltaire featured prominently) and, according to Erika Fischer-Lichte, replaced it with plays mainly about bourgeois life. In her prologue at the opening of the theatre, Madame Löwen indicated the nationalistic and edifying (Bildung) aims of the enterprise to educate its audience. She argued that the theatre should ‘succour the state to transform the angry, wild man/Into a human being, citizen, friend and patriot.’8 In line with Schlegel’s support for the idea of a theatre that would be responsive to the whole nation and guided by an intellectual awareness of the history of theatre, Lessing was appointed dramaturg at the National Theatre in Hamburg. As part of his duties, he wrote 100 essays (the Hamburg Dramaturgy) to keep the public informed about his views on the productions of the theatre as well his general theories about drama. In his last essay, Lessing still lamented the problem of over-dependence on French culture, referring to the difficulty of ‘getting the Germans a national theatre, while we Germans are not yet a

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nationality. I don’t speak about the political condition, but only about the moral character. One should almost say that this consists in not having one [national character] of our own, yet. We are still the devoted admirers of the never enough admired French. Everything that comes to us from across the Rhine is beautiful, charming, lovely, divine.’9 Although it lasted only two years, because of competition from a French touring company, and did not fulfil its purpose of transforming the theatrical repertory of the day, the Hamburg National Theatre created a possible model for a German National Theatre that would perform new plays in German, attempt to create a German style of performance, and present German environments, stories, topics and characters on the stage. According to Johann Schütze, who wrote a history of the theatre in Hamburg in 1794, the theatre was taken more seriously than earlier enterprises. The audience for the Hamburg National Theatre was influenced by a society of friends of the theatre who took front row seats in the stalls and set an example for others. ‘They came together for the daily visit to the theatre, to give their vote before and after the performances, to provide applause and condemnation during the plays, to promote morals and order in the theatre…. These self-appointed men set the tone and applauded good new plays or single, well-performed scenes, or even well-spoken speeches; they demanded quiet, order and silence when unjustified praise, spiteful censure, or any kind of improper comments were voiced in the audience, regardless of whether it came from the boxes or from the gallery.’10 At the same time, Lessing’s writings helped transform prevailing attitudes towards French culture. According to August Schlegel, ‘his [Lessing’s] bold, nay, (considering the opinions then prevalent), his hazardous attacks were especially successful in overthrowing the usurpation of French taste in Tragedy. With such success were his labours attended, that, shortly after the publication of his Dramaturgie, translations of French tragedies, and German tragedies modelled after them, disappeared altogether from the stage.’11 In 1768 Friedrich Klopstock proposed a plan to the Imperial Court in Vienna for the foundation of a subsidized National Theatre for the purpose of performing ‘German plays and a “singing house” for the musical declamation of German poetry.’12 Although his proposal had no immediate effect, in 1776 Emperor Josef II designated the Burgtheater a National Theatre, as an answer to the Comédie–Française in Paris. In the nineteenth century, under such company managers as Schreyvogel, Laube and Dingelstedt, it developed a reputation for producing German classical plays such as those of Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist, and later of Grillparzer and Schnitzler. In Mannheim, Prince Karl Theodor had established a lively and successful theatre for German-speaking drama and when he moved his court and the theatre to Munich it was agreed to create a National Theatre in its place. The Mannheim National Theatre opened in 1779 under the direction of Freiherr Heribert von Dalberg, assisted by the prominent actor and dramatist August

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Wilhelm Iffland and the young dramatist Friedrich Schiller, who took the role of a National Theatre seriously. A committee of the theatre met regularly to discuss issues about performances and dramaturgy, posing questions to its members such as: ‘What is a national stage in the true sense of the word? How can a theatre become a national stage? And is there really already a German theatre that deserves to be called a national stage?’13 In response to a question about how best to perform French plays in Mannheim, Iffland wrote of the difference between German and French styles of production: ‘The French give performances. The Germans representations. Their paintings of passions are splendid, ours are true…Therefore we must not try to imitate their playing if the performance of their tragedies should be effective on our stages.’14 Friedrich Schiller, whose The Robbers, Don Carlos and The Maid of Orleans represented a call for freedom in various situations, created in Wilhelm Tell (1804) a passionate expression of nationalist feeling that was equally resonant for German as for Swiss audiences. The portrayal of solidarity amongst the peoples of the three cantons who unite against feudal oppression and in favour of greater autonomy and democratic values (especially in the scene of the Rütli oath and in Attinghausen’s final scene) provided a striking model for the unification of Germany. In Act II the committed revolutionaries gather at night in a mountain valley at Rütli to take an oath of unity in the fight for autonomy. ‘Our nation is a single brotherhood; / We swear to stand together through the storm. / (All repeat the words with three fingers raised.) We will be free as were our fathers free. / We yield to death but not to slavery.’15 At the end of the eighteenth century, Christoph Martin Wieland could write approvingly of the growing nationalist trend in the German-speaking theatre: German history, German heroes, a German scene, German characters, customs and habits were something completely new on German stages. What could be more natural than German spectators feeling the liveliest pleasure at seeing themselves transferred, as if by a magic wand, into their own country, into well known cities and areas, amongst their own people and ancestors – amongst people they felt at home with and who showed them, more or less, the features that characterize our nation.16

National Theatres in emerging nations Following the French and American Revolutions, nationalist movements developed in many parts of Europe, fomenting demands for selfdetermination and disseminating ideas about democracy, citizenship and national distinctiveness. They encouraged the use of theatre for forging notions about national character and national identity. Many National Theatres were established with a nationalist remit and they participated in the construction of national identities and in legitimating the aspirations of

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nationalist movements. While they played a powerful role in instilling a sense of national commitment and future citizenship, they relied on essentialist and exclusionary notions of identity. As Alain Finkielkraut has indicated in his book The Defeat of the Mind, part of the responsibility for the proliferation of ideas of cultural essentialism in the nineteenth century lies with the widespread influence of such philosophers as Johann Gottfried von Herder.17 In the eighteenth century, German intellectuals fostered a Romantic belief in the importance of the cultural traditions of the common people. Influenced by the ideas of Rousseau, Herder encouraged German-speaking people to take pride in their own cultural traditions and their native language, and he urged them to acknowledge the importance of the German folk poets of the past.18 He believed in national distinctiveness and a Volksgeist (spirit of the people) and encouraged all nations to express themselves in their own individual ways. As a result of his endeavours and his admiration for folk songs and literature, Herder instilled a new respect for the German common people and German folk traditions, thereby helping to undermine the prevailing class distinctions of the day, and promoted a persuasive notion of national cultural unity which influenced other writers. The ideas of Herder encouraged intellectuals in countries throughout Europe to search for the unique aspects of cultural expression amongst their own peoples that would testify to separate and distinct national identities. In seeking to formulate their own notion of what tied their people together and made them unique, cultural nationalists to some extent reinvented the past, often writing ancient national histories that came to justify the creation of separate nation-states. Benedict Anderson has observed, ‘If nation-states are widely conceded to be “new” and “historical”, the nations to which they give political expression always loom out of an immemorial past.’19 Also Ernest Gellner argues, ‘The cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions. Any old shred would have served as well. [. . .] Nationalism is not what it seems. […] The cultures it claims to defend and revive are often its own inventions, or are modified out of all recognition.’20 Cultural nationalists investigated and exploited folklore, myths, legends, and local history, and also romanticized the lives of the rural folk. Medieval epics such as the Nibelungenlied, the Nordic sagas and other legends were suddenly regarded as important and used as raw material for creating new works of art. In most European countries, the interest in folk culture did not start from scratch during this period, but had evolved over centuries. However, from the late eighteenth century, folklore and folk culture or ethnography (as well as philology) became important reservoirs for notions of national identity. In Germany, stimulated by Herder’s example, Ludwig Tieck in 1803 published a volume of folk songs called Minnelieder aus dem schwäbischen Zeitalter (Minne songs from the Swabian era). Achim von Arnim and Clemens

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Brentano produced Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), an important selection of folk poetry, in 1806, with two more volumes following two years later. In 1807, Friedrich von der Hagen wrote a High German version of the Nibelungenlied. The Brothers Grimm, who had assisted Arnim and Brentano, published their own major collection of folk stories Kinderund Hausmärchen in 1812 and two volumes of Germanic legends, Deutsche Sagen, in 1816–18. The Grimms’ systematic and analytical approach to their work helped lay the foundations for the disciplines of folklore studies and linguistics, especially with such later works as Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik (four volumes, 1819–37), Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (1828) and Deutsche Mythologie (1835). In some countries nationalist feelings caused over-enthusiastic folklorists to manufacture their own heritage and create their own epics where none existed.21 In Scotland James Macpherson created an international stir by supposedly discovering the epic Poems of Ossian, which he had written himself. In Finland Elias Lönnrut assembled folk songs and organized them into a Homeric-style narrative called the Kalevala.22 In Ireland nationalists (including W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory) collected folk tales and published them to give a greater sense of an ancient history and culture in Ireland. Drama in the vernacular language was one of the principal and most visible forms of this cultural nationalist movement of ‘recovery’ and mythification in emerging European states. Opera, symphonic poems and folk music also proved to be powerful media for National Romanticism, for example in the work of Wagner, Verdi, Smetana, Dvoˇrák, Janáˇcek, Chopin, Grieg, Bartók, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Liszt, and Sibelius. Poetry and novels (e.g. by Pushkin in Russia, Sándor Pet˝ ofi in Hungary, Karel Mácha in the Czech lands, Adam Mickiewicz and Julius Słowacki in Poland, and Prešeren in Slovenia) as well as painting and sculpture (e.g. by Alphonse Mucha in Czechoslovakia, Hans Gude in Norway and Gallen-Kallela in Finland) were also important modes of nationalist expression. In many cases, National Theatres were established to further the aims of the cultural nationalist movements. For example, the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen, the National Theatre in Prague, the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin closely interacted with their respective cultural nationalist movements.23 The National Theatres played an important role in trying to construct distinctive national identities as well as in asserting the cultural achievements of their nations. Schiller, who was involved with the National Theatre in Mannheim at the end of the eighteenth century, argued that the theatre could help to construct the nation: ‘If in all our plays there was one main stream, if our poets reached an agreement and created a firm union for this final purpose – if a strict selection led their work and their brushes dedicated themselves only to national matters – in one word, if we had a national stage, we would also become a nation.’24

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However, it was not an easy process to establish a National Theatre in a nation that was not yet a nation-state. National Theatres in emerging nations in Europe experienced numerous teething difficulties, both because of the resistant attitudes and policies of the imperial authorities and because of the disagreements amongst the indigenous population. The National Theatre in Prague, which was perhaps more politically oriented than others, was imagined as early as the eighteenth century. After the 1848 revolution, a committee headed by František Palacký published an Announcement outlining their intentions to build a National Theatre and simultaneously raising hopes for greater political autonomy: ‘Our national theatre will soon arise as a monument to our constitutional rights and equality.’25 Nevertheless, it took another thirty years to build the theatre, amidst considerable controversy and fund-raising difficulties. In Norway the establishment of the National Theatre in Bergen by Ole Bull led some critics to feel that the theatre was misplaced. The dramatist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, for example, while praising Bull’s efforts, wrote that the National Theatre should eventually be located in the nation’s capital of Christiania (later Oslo).26 Wagner, who became involved in the 1848 revolution and the uprising in Dresden against the Prussian king, proposed a National Theatre for Dresden that would operate as a democratic institution with the director being elected, but his proposal was rejected.27 Some countries, such as Finland and Ireland, had no history of indigenous drama before their nationalist movements began. The first major performance of a Finnish-language drama occurred in 1869, and Irish-language drama only began to be written at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, well in advance of national independence, the National Theatre companies in these two countries used the stage – even though theatre was an art form more associated with the cultural oppressor – to project notions of national identity in opposition to a dominant foreign culture. The act of building a National Theatre edifice was often a way of spreading the ideas of nationalism from the intellectual few to the masses and of celebrating their communal endeavour. In Bohemia, Hungary28 and Finland, for example, collections were made around the country for the construction of the theatre, and so the theatre became a commonly owned enterprise (at least in spirit, if not in law). The foundation-laying ceremony for the Prague National Theatre took place at a time of patriotic protest as a result of the Czechs’ disappointment in failing to gain autonomy from Austria. When the Prague National Theatre was finally constructed twenty years later, the curtain tapestry facing the audience as they awaited the beginning of a performance reminded them of their spiritual ownership of the theatre in its depiction of images of the national collection of money for the new theatre.29 In Finland, in response to the February Manifesto by the Tsar in 1899 that threatened the country with a policy of russification, nationalists seized the opportunity to assert their cultural independence by building a massive granite temple near the centre of Helsinki.30 A national collection

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was made and the foundation-laying ceremony in 1900 occurred amidst a three-day singing event. The linguistic identity of National Theatres was often one of their most crucial aspects. In Prague, the theatre staged plays and operas in Czech to challenge the hegemony of German culture. In Norway the National Stage in Bergen introduced the Norwegian language to demonstrate its ascendancy over Danish (and Swedish). In the Finnish theatre, although some of the leading nationalists (such as Topelius) favoured two branches of a national theatre, one performing in Swedish and one in Finnish, this position was rejected by Finnish-speaking nationalists who stressed the importance of creating a Finnish language theatre. Often the building of a National Theatre was accompanied by the demand for an acting school, which would help educate the actors to speak correctly and in the process encourage a sense of good citizenship. In countries where the national language (such as Czech, Hungarian and Finnish) had not yet been securely established as a medium for high culture, the correct use and pronunciation of the language on the national stage was a major issue in creating National Theatres and ultimately became an important feature for the audience and a topic on which the critics frequently commented. In Hungary the Parliament assigned the Academy of Sciences the role of establishing a National Theatre as part of its function in ‘the institutional cultivation of the Hungarian language.’31 In Germany the word Bühnensprache (stage language) as a term for correct pronunciation indicates the role of the theatre in helping to standardize German speech for the population.32 The repertory of each theatre was of course a major concern to the nationalists. The nationalist canon often included plays about historical or legendary figures engaged in the nation-building or national liberation process or in some way representing certain nationalistic ideals, such as Wilhelm Tell in Switzerland (and Germany), Joan of Arc in France, Libuše in the Czech lands, Boris Godunov in Russia, and Cathleen Ni Houlihan in Ireland. The repertory featured characters from local mythological and folkloric tales such as the Norse and Germanic epics in Scandinavia and Germany, as well as historical and rural characters, in order to provide national protagonists who would help to define the character of the ‘awakened’ nation. Cultural nationalists often blurred the border between folklore and history. For example, some nationalists in Finland celebrated the characters in the Kalevala as historical. Likewise, Irish nationalists used folklore to create a national mythology about ancient Irish history that helped distinguish themselves from the English colonists. In Bohemia legendary stories about the origins of the Czech royal family became the subject matter of plays and operas. Plays dealing with folkloric heroes helped authenticate the folk culture and construct alternative histories to those that had been imposed by the dominant culture. The legendary characters and stories that were created became an important source for inculcating notions of national identity. While Wagner exploited

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the Nibelungenlied, Finnish dramatists used the Kalevala and Irish playwrights the Taín. For example, W. B. Yeats wrote a cycle of plays about the mythical hero Cuchulainn. In his play Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1902, Yeats created a nationalist archetype that was mythical but rooted in history. Yeats, who collaborated with Lady Gregory in writing it, set the play in the context of the 1798 rebellion led by Wolfe Tone but avoided the obvious strategy of characterizing the male leader. Instead, he created a mythical figure of mother Ireland calling out her sons to fight for their country. As the spirit of a suppressed people longing for independence, Cathleen speaks in metaphors to an audience on stage as well as in the auditorium, urging them to sacrifice themselves in the struggle for autonomy. In addition to national archetypes, the repertory also featured dramas about anti-heroes that sometimes caused controversy or even riots when they first appeared on stage or in print (such as Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Alexis Kivi’s Heath Cobblers and Synge’s Playboy of the Western World). Often these plays about anti-heroes were sanitized in subsequent stage productions, and the characters were accepted as loveable national figures in spite of their roguish or amoral behaviour (and, in some cases, the author’s implicit attack on society). Occasionally, particular sections of such plays, for instance the fourth act of Peer Gynt (which satirized Norwegian nationalists), were omitted because of their problematic nature.33 While National Theatre directors were often anxious to include both foreign classics as well as domestic drama in the repertory, they frequently ran the risk of offending nationalists who wished to promote the distinctiveness of the national culture. In Ireland Yeats was accused of being too influenced by foreign theatrical forms such as the work of Richard Wagner and Japanese Noh theatre. However, at the same time he recognized the power of the theatre to influence the nationalist movement and to gain credibility from it. He often looked for appropriate symbols for a new national identity. In a letter to Gilbert Murray (suggesting a version of Oedipus Rex for the Abbey), Yeats wrote, ‘Here one never knows when one may affect the mind of a whole generation. The country is in its first plastic state, and takes the mark of every strong finger.’34 At the same time, Yeats was never comfortable with simply presenting nationalist sentiments and often challenged his audience by using nationalist rhetoric for the theatre enterprise but presenting images on the stage that were discordant with that rhetoric and which sometimes required a police presence to prevent rioting in the audience. In conclusion, the standing theatres created and subsidized by monarchs in Paris, Vienna and Copenhagen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led indirectly to the promotion of drama in vernacular languages and the establishment of national repertories, both of which served as prerequisites for National Theatres in the nineteenth century in emerging nations in Europe. The latter exploited their folk traditions and folk poetry, as advocated

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by German philosophers such as Herder, to develop their own national repertories. Many of the notions of national identity that persist in European countries today owe their origins to nineteenth-century myth-making by cultural nationalists who were influenced by the values and ideals of Johann von Herder and German nationalism and Romanticism. Although the social circumstances in the various countries differed from one another, the process was similar and tended to homogenize national character and culture into essentialist features which were deemed to have arisen organically in the development of the nation. The National Theatres fostered the construction and promotion of such notions of national identity by putting various types of national protagonist on the stage and trying them out in front of a live audience who could accept or reject them.

Notes 1. See Marker and Marker (1996), p. 61. 2. J. E. Schlegel (1967), Gedanken zur Aufnahme des dänischen Theaters, in J. E. Schlegel, Canut: Ein Trauerspiel, ed. by Horst Steinmetz (Stuttgart: Reclam), p. 88. Translated from the German by Anna Lohse 3. Schlegel, op. cit., p. 75 4. Schlegel, op. cit., p. 76. 5. See Heinz Kindermann (1965), Theatergeschichte Europas, 10 vols (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag), Vol. IV, p. 478. 6. For a thorough discussion of the repertory, see J.G. Robertson (1939), pp. 40–93. 7. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (2003), p. 46. 8. Quoted in Erika Fischer-Lichte (2004), p. 152. 9. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1959), Vol. II, p. 759. 10. Quoted in Fischer-Lichte, op. cit., p. 151. 11. A. W. Schlegel (1846), p. 510. 12. G. E. Grimm and Frank R. Max (eds.) (1990), Deutsche Dichter: Aufklärung und Empfindsamkeit (Stuttgart: Reclam) Vol. 3, p. 164. 13. Quoted in Kindermann op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 699. 14. Quoted in Kindermann op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 698. 15. Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act Two, lines 1447–1450. Translated (1972) by William F. Mainland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 61. 16. C. M. Wieland (1967), Werke, 3 vols (Munich: Hanser), Vol. 3, p. 478. 17. Alain Finkielkraut (1995). 18. See Johann Gottfried Herder (1877), Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung), Vol. 9, pp. 525–529. 19. Benedict Anderson (1995), p. 11. 20. Ernest Gellner (1983), p. 56. 21. For a discussion of the invention of the Scottish kilt and tartan, for example, see Hugh Trevor-Roper (1983), ‘The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 15–41. 22. See William A. Wilson (1976), pp. 49–53. 23. For a more detailed discussion of this, see my essay (2005) ‘Herder and European Theatre’ in Staging Nationalism: Essays on Theatre and National Identity,

20

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

National Theatres in 18th and 19th Century Europe ed. Kiki Gounaridou (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland Publishers), pp. 63–85. Friedrich Schiller (1976), Werke in drei Bänden (Munich: Hanser), Vol.1, p. 728. ˇ Quoted in Stanley Buchholz Kimball (1964), p. 39. See also František Cerný (1985), ‘Idea Národního divadla’ in Divadlo v ˇceské kultuˇre 19.století (Prague: Národní galerie v Praze), pp. 17–25. Laurence Senelick (ed.) (1991), p. 151. See Stanley Sadie (ed.) (1997), New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London and New York: Macmillan), Vol. IV, p. 1056. See Senelick, op. cit., pp. 292–4. This was, in fact, the second curtain because the first, with a different design, was destroyed in a fire shortly after the opening of the theatre in 1881. Although the location was somewhat peripheral to Senate Square, it was located next to the central train station and across from the Atheneum art school. The organizers were disappointed that they could not obtain a more central location. See Senelick, op. cit., p. 287. See Michael Patterson (1990), p. 9. For a discussion of the standardization of languages, see Ronald Wardhaugh (2002), Introduction to Sociolinguistics, fourth ed. (Blackwell: Oxford), pp. 33–7. See Sarah Bryant-Bertail (2000), Space and Time in Epic Theatre: The Brechtian Legacy (Rochester: Camden House), p. 122. Yeats to Gilbert Murray, 24 January 1905, quoted in D. R. Clark and J. B. McGuire (1989), W. B.Yeats: The Writing of Sophocles’ King Oedipus (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society), p. 8.

2 National Theatres: Then and Now Marvin Carlson

The term National Theatre is in such common usage around the globe that it seems fairly transparent, but as is the case with any term widely adopted across nationalities and cultures, when we consider individual usages we find that there are almost as many varieties of National Theatre as there are National Theatres themselves. There is certainly a general consensus of opinion about what a National Theatre is, but even the best known National Theatres do not generally fit this model in all particulars. The common image of a National Theatre is of a monumental edifice located in a national capital, authorized, privileged and supported by the government, and devoted wholly or largely to productions of the work of national dramatists. Naturally some National Theatres adhere closely to this ideal model, but the vast majority depart from it in one way or another and the reasons for their doing so provide interesting insights into how the ideas of nationhood and of theatre operate in different times and different places. Although my remarks will focus on the National Theatre in Europe, I will also look more briefly at some of the ways this essentially European idea was interpreted outside of Europe, since these variations often shed important light on the assumptions and dynamics of the concept itself. This concept of a National Theatre, like the modern concept of ‘nation’ upon which it rests, is European in origin, and these two concepts evolved together in the years just before and after the French Revolution. As Loren Kruger has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of nationalism and the concept of a National Theatre are closely connected with the development of Romantic theory, particularly by Rousseau in France and by German writers of the late eighteenth century. The appearance of the first National Theatre in Germany a century before there was a German nation is not as paradoxical as it seems, since the concern for creating a German nation and a German consciousness was a central one at this period. As Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Hamburg Dramaturgy) clearly shows, the German stage of this period, like the stages of most of Europe, was dominated by French drama and French models. Even while seeking to replace French drama by something more 21

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German, however, German proto-nationalists who were interested in theatre continued to utilize a common, if generally unacknowledged, French model, the Comédie-Française, which was in fact if not yet in name, a prototype of the National Theatre, established and maintained by the central government and dedicated to presenting the major dramatists of France, one of the first of the modern European nations. The international cultural dominance of France during the eighteenth century in fact ensured that theatres generally modelled on the Comédie would be founded in a number of countries, even though these, in the age of monarchy, normally grew out of the desires of the king rather than those of a national legislative body. A number of the most important of these, the Burgtheater in Vienna, founded in 1741, the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, in 1748, and Sweden’s Dramaten (Royal Dramatic Theatre), in 1788, still exist as major examples of National Theatres today. The Burgtheater officially changed its title as early as 1776 to that of ‘Hof und Nationaltheater’ (Court and National Theatre), a clear indication of the new consciousness – and not all that eighteenth-century either, think of Great Britain’s Royal National Theatre today. (However, it is still known as ‘the Burgtheater’ today, and its website adds ‘the former imperial court theatre’.) The venerable Comédie-Française reflected this new consciousness at the very beginning of the Revolution, in 1789, by renaming itself the Théâtre de la Nation, a title that existed only until the theatre was closed in 1793 under the Terror and its actors arrested as being still too closely associated with the court rather than the nation. The theatre was reorganized under Napoleon and after a brief period as an Imperial theatre, became again the Comédie, still one of Europe’s major models for a national house. The major spread of the National Theatre concept during the nineteenth century was into Central and Eastern Europe, where it most commonly appeared as a central element in challenging the political and aesthetic hegemony of the French, German, and Russian languages and the political systems that they represented. In Poland the theatre has always been intimately associated with the struggle for national and linguistic independence, and the fortunes of the Polish National Theatre have closely reflected the ebb and flow of this struggle. As early as 1765 King Stanislaw Augustus, like a number of other eighteenth-century monarchs, established a Polish version of the Comédie-Française, the similarly named Polish Comedy Theatre, which was closed during the first partition of Poland during the 1770s. Reopened in 1779, this theatre was claimed as the first Polish National Theatre by Wojciech Bogusławski, the so-called ‘father of the National Theatre’. From 1782 until 1814, Bogusławski served on and off as director of this venture and in 1820 he published a History of the National Theatre. During most of the nineteenth century, with Poland again under foreign control, the term National Theatre was prohibited, and the major home of spoken drama in Warsaw was called the Variety Theatre. The term National Theatre was restored in 1924, six years after Poland’s political resurrection.

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The Magyar Theatre of Pest was designated as the National Theatre of Hungary in 1840, soon after Magyar was proclaimed the official language of the country, and the next generation saw a group of additional similar ventures as new nations emerged in the wake of the retreating Ottoman Empire. National Theatres were established in Romania in 1852, in Croatia in 1860, in Serbia in 1861, and in Slovenia in 1867. The mixture of artistic vision, social concern, and national pride represented by these new institutions is clearly expressed in the statement of goals presented by the organizers of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad: … to raise the theatre art in our people, to strengthen and forever support her existence and development, to give a new impulse to the national drama and literature, to establish a school and a nursery to those sons and daughters of our nation who wish to dedicate themselves to this noble skill, to raise the theatre practice, by the efforts and experience of skilled, educated and delighted men of ours, to such height and perfection, from which the theatre will become the school of moral, the example and form of good taste, the carrier of education and learning, the wake up call of national consciousness, the guardian of national spirit and language, the mirror of splendid and sad past and the messenger of our fortune.1 The only National Theatre to appear in this period outside of Central and Eastern Europe was the National Theatre of Portugal, founded in 1846 by the reformer Almeida Garrett who, after the Revolution of the previous decade, was given the responsibility of raising the level of dramatic art in that country. The common nineteenth-century bonds between nationalism, linguistic pride, and National Theatres spread to Northern Europe in the 1870s, where a Finnish National Theatre was formed in 1872 to champion that language and culture against the previous hegemony of Swedish, and similarly in 1876 when a National Theatre was founded in Bergen to champion Norwegian against the prevailing dominance of Danish. This Norwegian venture developed from the first specifically Norwegian theatre, formed in 1850, and is now remembered for providing its first director, Henrik Ibsen, with his grounding in theatrical production. Very much in this tradition is the last and one of the most important of the nineteenth-century National Theatre enterprises, in Ireland, where members of the Gaelic League saw theatre, as had their predecessors in Norway, Finland, Poland and Hungary, as a critical site for the assertion of a new cultural, linguistic and political identity, here Irish as opposed to English. This interest developed through the 1890s and culminated in the founding of the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903 and the opening of the Abbey Theatre the following year. In June of 1924 Yeats, the leading voice for a national stage, and Lady Gregory wrote to the president of the new-formed Free State Government, declaring that since ‘by tradition and accomplishment’

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the Abbey Theatre had become ‘the National Theatre of Ireland, it should no longer be in the possession of private individuals, but should belong to the state.’ This argument was accepted by the government, which provided state funding for the Abbey, making it the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world.2 Political turbulence, wars, and occupations of the early twentieth century essentially brought to an end this phase of National Theatre creation, although the establishment by the King of Siam of a National Theatre in that country in 1935, provided the first example of a new expansion of the concept. During the twentieth century a number of non-European countries, especially in Asia and Africa, would establish National Theatres whose primary goal was a local imitation of European cultural values. Just as the monarchs of the mid-eighteenth century built the prototypes of subsequent National Theatres in imitation of the Comédie-Française, seeking to echo the presumed cultural superiority of France, so twentieth-century leaders of countries around the world seeking to emulate European culture often included as a prominent element of these plans the establishment of a National Theatre. Much the same concern clearly lay behind Ataturk’s establishment of a National Theatre in Turkey in 1947, an important element in his conscious Westernizing of Turkish culture. The opening of National Theatres in Greece in 1930 and in Macedonia and Albania in the late 1940s gave the Balkans the greatest concentration of such theatres in Europe by mid-century. A National Theatre began to be discussed in Korea in 1946, and the project gained momentum with independence in 1948 and an early act of the new National Assembly calling for a Korean National Theatre, which opened in 1950. Not surprisingly, Australia, with its strong European orientation, also began to consider establishing a National Theatre at this time, doubtless stimulated by the passing of a National Theatre Bill in the English Parliament in the winter of 1948–49, the first major legislative step in that lengthy process. The Australian government naturally asked Tyrone Guthrie to come as an advisor in this endeavour. Guthrie had just completed a brilliant eight-year directorship at the Old Vic, causing that theatre to be widely regarded in London as the possible home of the proposed new National Theatre. This did in fact come to pass, but not for another fifteen years, in 1963. In 1949, Guthrie spent two weeks visiting theatres in Australia, at the end of which time he reported that the country was not ready for a National Theatre. It possessed, in his opinion, neither a distinctive body of dramatic works nor a sufficiently well trained group of theatre artists. His suggestion was that Australian theatre artists be sent to Europe to improve their skills and until they returned the country should improve the level of its work by the importation of travelling European companies. This condescending attitude naturally aroused considerable resentment and in fact did much to encourage a National Theatre movement in Australia, but it was not until 1968 that the Australian government decided to proceed on this matter and its decision then was not

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to create a single National Theatre but an umbrella organization that would support an official state theatre in each provincial capital. Guthrie went on in 1953 to create the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford, Ontario, which he hoped, in vain, would be ultimately recognized as the National Theatre of Canada, but here too the theatre, in its early years, followed his advice to the Australians by relying heavily on imported British talent. The colonialist era in Africa not surprisingly brought with it European theatre, but rarely the concept of a National Theatre, whose close ties with freedom from external authority made it an unlikely tool for colonialism. It was with the coming of independence that a number of African nations established National Theatres, echoing in some measure the same desire to use theatre to encourage an emerging national cultural expression as was seen in the European National Theatres a century earlier. In the postcolonial nations of the twentieth century, however, the National Theatre was a much more ambiguous symbol than it had been a century before in Europe. The role of such institutions as central locations for the expression of a new national consciousness was now qualified by the fact that the concept of a National Theatre, indeed often the concept of theatre itself, came with deep associations with European culture and thus to the European colonialist project. The so-called Kenyan National Theatre was in fact established by the colonialist authority in 1952, a decade before independence, and was essentially devoted to the colonialist project. Even after independence, its orientation and repertoire remained almost exclusively European, and it remains still today a site of struggle for those who want to make it an authentically national enterprise. More commonly, African National Theatres have been established in the wake of independence, and thus have a clearer affinity with their European predecessors, but here again the ghosts of the European cultural experiences tend to haunt these ventures and often create a striking tension between colonial and postcolonial agendas. An excellent example of this may be found in Senegal, which achieved its independence from France in 1960. The first president of the new nation, Léopold Senghor, saw the arts as critical to establishing a self-image for the country, and one of his major cultural projects was the building of a National Theatre in Dakar in 1965. One of the few National Theatres to bear a person’s name, the Daniel Soreno National Theatre honoured the memory of one of the country’s most prominent colonial artists. Soreno was born in Dakar, but educated in Toulouse, where he joined the regional theatre and eventually joined Jean Vilar at the French Théâtre National Populaire (TNP). Vilar was just then making the TNP into a major force in the French theatre world, a rival to the Comédie itself, since, as Loren Kruger has noted, the TNP in France, like the Volksbühnen in Germany, could make a serious claim during much of the twentieth century to be operating as their nation’s National Theatre. The installation of Soreno as the eponymous godfather of the Senegalese National Theatre thus centrally, and not at

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all inappropriately, combines an evocation of French colonialism with the populist branch of the National Theatre movement. Interestingly, as France began to decentralize its theatre in the late twentieth century, establishing state-supported theatres both in the Paris suburbs and in major provincial capitals, Daniel Soreno was similarly honoured, so that both the main stage of Toulouse and the so-called National Theatre in the Paris suburb of Vincennes today bear his name. National Theatres began to appear in the Arab world only after 1950, where they filled a cultural need related to, but distinctly different from, that of any previous organizations which bore this name. The leader in this, as in most cultural manifestations in the Arab world in the twentieth century, was Egypt, which established a National Theatre under Nasser in 1953. Viewed in contrast to most earlier National Theatres, the National Theatre of Egypt was created in response to a different, and to some extent contradictory, set of needs. Like many of the nineteenth-century European National Theatres it arose amid an upsurge of nationalism as a long-time occupying force, in this case the British, was disappearing. It was regarded then, and since, as a central cultural symbol for the nation, and a showcase for its leading dramatists and theatre artists. At the same time it shared some of the features of the Siamese and Turkish National Theatres, as well as those of many later National Theatres in postcolonial countries. That is, the work presented, even if created by local artists, is still based on a European model of theatre and so still has the aura, even among many of its supporters, of being less a national expression than an attempt, and a lesser one at that, to imitate a European model. In this respect the role of the Egyptian National Theatre has been less that of the nineteenth-century National Theatres seeking a unique expression of national culture than that of the eighteenth-century monarchs who sought to demonstrate their cultural credentials by creating local imitations of the Comédie-Française. The choice of language, central to the National Theatre phenomenon up until this time, also operated in Egypt in a quite different way. The great majority of the new National Theatres until this time had championed a local language, often hitherto suppressed or disregarded as inferior in matters of cultural expression by the controlling or occupying powers, as was the case for example with Czech, Hungarian, Finnish, Norwegian, and Gaelic. The language of the Egyptian National Theatre, however, was not actually spoken by the Egyptian public, but was Fusha, or classical Arabic, the language of the Koran and the form already established throughout the Arabic world for literary expression such as poetry. The tension between Fusha and local dialects in the Arab world, often so far apart as to be in effect different languages, still continues, although strict adherence to Fusha, required in the early years of Arabic National Theatres, became more negotiable as other states followed the Egyptian example, Tunisia in 1958, Syria, the other founding state of the modern Arabic theatre, in 1960, Algeria in 1963, and Iraq in 1968. In the late 1970s Tunisia became the first

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Arab state to officially accord colloquial Arabic official legal status with Fusha, and a 1979 directive from the Ministry of Culture officially approved Fusha, colloquial Arabic, and Bedouin as acceptable languages for National Theatre productions. An interesting contrast to the linguistic tensions in the Arabic theatre is provided by Israel, which named the already long established Habima Theatre its National Theatre in 1958, ten years after the foundation of the state. Hebrew, like Fusha, was the classical language of its people, that of the sacred writings – the Torah, in fact essentially spoken only on ceremonial occasions. Nathan Birnbaum, who coined the term Zionism in 1890 and who was one of the founding fathers of that movement, argued for the designation of Yiddish as the official Jewish language, the one to be spoken in the proposed restored Jewish state in Palestine, but as Zionism developed, Yiddish was increasingly regarded as the language of the diaspora, and Hebrew preferred as the purer and more appropriate form. Thus, perhaps even more than in the Eastern European nationalist movements of the Romantic period, language and nationalism assumed in Zionism an almost mystic relationship, and the theatre, as in that earlier period, became an important means of providing a wider public with a practical demonstration of that relationship. As Zionism was developing in the early twentieth century, theatre in Hebrew which had appeared sporadically and largely as a literary form from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, was largely unknown, while a strong Yiddish theatrical culture had developed in Central and Eastern Europe. Hebrew alternatives to this theatre began to appear in Poland and Russia after 1907, the most important of these being the Habima, founded in Moscow in 1917 with the specific purpose both of stressing the centrality of Hebrew to Jewish culture and of moving eventually to Palestine.3 The latter it accomplished in 1931, settling in Tel Aviv, where it remained, eventually and almost inevitably to be designated Israel’s National Theatre. In the later part of the nineteenth century the National Theatre concept continued to spread to all parts of the world, although in the postcolonial era the traditional use of this cultural monument as a significant symbol of national pride and independence was considerably compromised, especially in Africa and Latin America, by its association with European cultural expression. Many so-called National Theatres created during the twentieth century were less involved with cultural consolidation than with the interest of the local government in projecting an image of cultural achievement that would meet European standards, less like the model of the European National Theatres of the early nineteenth century than like the model of the European monarchs of the previous century who established theatres for the same reason they built small imitations of Versailles, simply to follow the cultural lead of France. Not infrequently these theatres today in fact play a very marginal role in the cultural life of their nations. When I visited the so-called National Theatre of Guatemala in 1985, this monumental European-style building in

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the heart of Guatemala City had been closed for months and had apparently last housed an agricultural exhibition. In Morocco in 1989 I was able to attend an actual production at the so-called National Theatre, but it was an amateur staging of the American comedy Harvey, staged by members of the largely European diplomatic corps. Thus, although the term National Theatre has attained world-wide distribution, it remains largely associated with the European tradition, where it developed and where it produced its best known examples. Oddly enough, though, several of the major European nations with the most significant theatrical traditions never established official National Theatres or only did so late in the twentieth century, long after their countries had consolidated as nations and indeed long after National Theatres had been established even in rather remote parts of the globe. The best-known of these late-blooming National Theatres is of course that of Great Britain, whose cultural and political community were debating the establishment of such an institution as early as the mid-nineteenth century – but it was more than a century later, in 1976, that the actual building was erected. I will not attempt to summarize the many issues, social, political, economic, cultural and geographical, that were involved in these debates. I will only quote briefly from Loren Kruger’s excellent book on the national stage as cultural expression. Kruger suggests that the British parliamentary debate of 1913 on this subject produced some of the clearest expressions of the motives for such an undertaking. Kruger notes that ‘the emphasis in this debate falls squarely on Britain’s international standing and exemplary influence as a reconciliatory force in the world (empire as Pax Britannica) and on the National Theatre as a representative of this standing, rather than on the practical problems involved in funding and maintaining a national theatre.’4 Although the Pax Britannica and the cultural use of British theatre in general and Shakespeare in particular makes Britain a somewhat special case, the shift in the general function of the European National Theatre from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century is typical. Its function is no longer to serve as a rallying point for an emerging nation, but rather to stand as a cultural monument witnessing to the cultural accomplishment of an already politically well-established state. Spain’s National Theatre was established at almost the same time as that of Great Britain, but its focus and organization were extremely different, due in large part to the fact that it looked, as the British National Theatre did not, to the contemporary French theatre as its model. Following the death of Franco, Spain, under the leadership of Adolfo Suárez, who served as Prime Minister from 1976 to 1981, developed a parliamentary democracy on the general Western European model, with a Ministry of Culture, based on the French model, established in 1977. By the mid-1970s the French National Theatre was a very different organization than it had been when it had served as one of the central models for the first wave of European National Theatres a century and a half before. At that earlier period, the French national stage

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was still operating under the system established by Napoleon, itself echoing pre-Revolutionary practice. Two national houses represented the spoken theatre, both in Paris: the Comédie, of course, and its second house, the Odéon. This system remained in place until after the Second World War, when the feeling grew in France and elsewhere in Europe that a theatre supported by the state should not be represented by a single organization in the national capital, but by theatres accessible to a public throughout the nation. For the rest of the twentieth century, the old centralized concept of a National Theatre struggled with this new vision of a decentralized one in a number of European countries, but perhaps most intensively in France. This struggle, which continues today, has been far too complex for me to deal with in this context, but in brief summary it involved both decentralizing the Paris theatre by establishing state-supported houses in areas of the city and its suburbs far from the traditional cultural centre and establishing such houses in other cities across France. Only a few of these new ventures were actually designated National Theatres, a variety of other names being used, the most important of which was the National Dramatic Centres, a term first applied in the 1960s, when this movement reached its peak under Cultural Minister André Malraux. Although Centres dramatiques nationals (CDN) and various other state-funded theatre organizations are still found across France, the government has been reluctant to expand the number of so-called National Theatres. Today there are only six: the traditional Opéra, the Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Odéon and the Comédie-Française, one decentralized Parisian house, the Théâtre National de la Colline, and one decentralized regional house, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. The tension between the old concept of a centralized National Theatre in the state capital and a decentralized one seeking to serve audiences across the nation was felt in many European countries from the late 1960s onward, most strikingly perhaps in Scandinavia, where programmes of state-subsidized theatres with a regional rather than a national remit, generally with the responsibility for touring to extend their influence still further, became a major concern during the 1970s. In 1978 Finland established eight major regional theatres with the specific responsibility to tour in their regions, even though today virtually every city in Finland with a population of over 25,000 has a permanent state-supported theatre. Sweden established its first regional theatre, Norbottensteatern, in 1967, which toured through almost a quarter of Sweden’s total area, much of it north of the Arctic Circle. The state cultural policy of 1974 established similar state regional theatres with similar responsibilities all over Sweden. Norway’s first regional theatre, the Hålogaland Teater in Tromsø was founded in 1971 with a mandate almost identical to that of Sweden’s Norbottensteatern, to tour through all northern Norway, about one-third of the country. Five more such regional theatres were established during that same decade, one of them in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, whose largest urban centre has fewer than 8,000 inhabitants.

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In Spain, Suárez looked to Malraux’s concept of the Centre dramatique national to establish in Madrid a Centro Dramático Nacional in 1978, with two stages, after the fashion of most European National Theatres, the Sala Olimpia for new or experimental work and the María Guerrero for the mainstream Western tradition from Ibsen onward. What was clearly lacking here, especially in view not so much of the CDN tradition but certainly of the National Theatre one, was an emphasis on the national repertoire, especially the national classics. In response to this concern, a new venture, the CNTC (Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico) was established in 1985 for the presentation of Spanish drama of the Golden Age, and looking particularly for models to England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and to the tradition of the Comédie-Française. Adolfo Marsillach, the first director of the Madrid CND served also as the first director of the new CNTC. An important part of the reorganization of the Spanish government in the late 1970s, both politically and culturally, was a recognition of Catalan national identity, guaranteed by the Catalan Statute of Autonomy of 1979. Barcelona had long been Madrid’s major cultural rival and the de facto capital of Catalonia, with its own distinct language and cultural traditions. The Statute of Autonomy called for the establishment of Catalan television, radio, and press as well as other means of ‘social communication’. The liveliness of the theatre scene in Barcelona made it inevitable that this new era would soon see the establishment of a Catalan National Theatre. Indeed the Teatre Nacional de Cataluny (TNC) opened in September of 1997 and provides a fascinating example of how the idea of a National Theatre played out in this particular end-of-century political situation. Architecturally it is almost a parody of the concept, a vast free-standing monument in the heart of the city, located on a major boulevard and built in the style of a Greek temple. Its detractors were quick to compare it to a mausoleum, a Catalan Valley of the Fallen. If architecturally the TNC echoed the major National Theatres of the early nineteenth century, however, its repertoire reflected the tensions of its own era. I can recall that when I first attended the Comédie-Française in the 1960s it was still a temple dedicated essentially to the French classics, closed entirely to dramatists of other cultures and open only grudgingly to such recent French upstarts as Ionesco. Today of course all that has changed, and the repertoire, like that of other major so-called National Theatres in Europe, is largely composed of classic and modern European plays. A recent season (2004–05) was quite typical, offering Corneille, Molière and La Fontaine (as seen through the eyes of American Robert Wilson), but also Shakespeare, Calderon, Thomas Bernhard, Euripides, Ostrovsky, and Chekhov. Barcelona has long prided itself as being not only the capital of Catalonia, but also as being far more European oriented than insular Madrid. The dynamics of the establishment of the Catalonia National Theatre would naturally seem to call for a repertoire of plays created in that language, but the cultural situation of Barcelona and the image of a National Theatre at the close of the

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twentieth century urged a more international selection. When Josep María Flotats, one of Barcelona’s best known and most honoured actor-directors, was selected to head the new National Theatre, this made it fairly clear what the choice of repertoire would be, since Flotats had long been criticized for ignoring Catalan plays at his theatre, the Poliorama. Even so, his choice of an opening production for the new National Theatre in September of 1997, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, could hardly have been better calculated to offend Catalan nationalists. Flotats’ choice of repertoire (his second and last production was Chekhov’s The Seagull) and the enormous expense of his productions led to his dismissal for bad management only a month after the theatre opened. Nuria Espert’s prediction that ‘without Flotats, the TNC will be a museum’,5 has not proved to be the case, but now, several directors later, the TNC is still building its reputation and attempting to find a middle ground between a national and a European theatre. A similar position, in certain respects, is held by France’s only National Theatre outside its capital, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. There director Stéphane Braunschweig has not had to deal with any responsibility to an indigenous Alsatian drama, but on the contrary has utilized the ambiguous national identity of Alsace-Lorraine as the basis for seeing Strasbourg as both a National Theatre of France and as a European-oriented National Theatre from a city that, like Barcelona, has long occupied a liminal position in the old map of European nation-states. The productions at Strasbourg are performed in a variety of languages, primarily French, German, and Italian, and drawn from many nations. In addition to its border position between France and Germany Strasbourg now is the seat of the European Parliament, and clearly Brauschweig sees this National Theatre of France as also an International Theatre of the New Europe. Despite its national funding and name, its performance orientation is much more accurately represented by the fact that it is a member of the Union of European Theatres organized in 1990 by Giorgio Strehler, an organization that includes many so-called National Theatres which are now much more oriented toward Europe in general. An official National Theatre has yet to be established in Italy, although a major campaign for it was initiated at the close of the twentieth century by Prime Minister Romano Prodi and his Minister of Culture Walter Veltroni. Although united as a state in 1861, Italy remained highly decentralized so far as theatre was concerned, its theatres supported by regions, provinces, and municipalities, but not by the federal government. In 1998, however, the Italian Parliament introduced National Theatre legislation to establish for the first time not one but two National Theatres, the Piccolo di Milano and the Teatro di Roma, both long-established municipal organizations. The reasons for the selection were clear. The concept that a National Theatre should be located in the national capital had been basic to this movement from the beginning and was only somewhat modified by the late-twentiethcentury interest in decentralization. The Teatro di Roma, Rome’s leading

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prose theatre, was the obvious choice. For decades, however, the most famous theatre in Italy had been the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, directed by Giorgio Strehler, one of the most honoured European directors of the late twentieth century. The situation was further complicated in the Spring of 2006 when a branch of the Ministry of Culture announced that Rome’s historic Teatro Valle would henceforth operate in practice, if not in name, as a National Theatre, devoted exclusively to Italian work, classic and contemporary. What will happen to this plan if and when the earlier legislation finally goes into effect remains to be seen. Strehler had dreamed for years of making the Piccolo the official National Theatre of Italy, as it was widely regarded as such unofficially, and the major project of his final years was the building of a monumental home for it, the rival of any National Theatre in the world. Unhappily, his death on Christmas Day of 1997 meant that he did not live to see this dream fulfilled, although his founding of the Union of European Theatres, of which he was the first president, may also be seen as a central manifestation of a new era, a move beyond the National Theatres of an older Europe toward what Loren Kruger has called transnational theatres. Thus, as the twentieth century ended, Germany remained alone among the major theatre nations of Western and Central Europe as lacking an official National Theatre, even though it was in Germany that this concept evolved and where its earliest examples were attempted. There have been many reasons for this. First, and most importantly, Germany, like Italy, was not consolidated as a nation until the late nineteenth century, by which time a solidly decentralized theatre was established, with strong regional theatres supported, as in Italy, by individual states, regions, and municipalities. As Prussia extended its political sway over other German states, their cultural, and in many cases especially their theatrical independence, remained, so that today the Bavarian State Theatre in Munich is perhaps closer in the cultural imaginary to a state theatre in the traditional sense than any single theatre in Berlin. Even with this centrifugal force in German theatrical life, internal historical pressures and external models seemed likely to result in the establishment of a National Theatre in Berlin around the beginning of the twentieth century, especially when the Deutsches Theater, organized in imitation of the Comédie-Française, came under the directorship of Max Reinhardt. The subsequent World Wars, the division of Germany, and the negative connotations now attached to the old idea of the German nation all worked against a post-war revival of a National Theatre project in Germany. Even after reunification, this idea seems as remote as ever. The ‘Deutsches’ is still widely regarded as the Berlin, if not the German, equivalent of a national house, but during much of the late twentieth century it was eclipsed internationally by Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, just as the Teatro di Roma was eclipsed by Strehler’s Piccolo. Toward the end of the century, as the reputation of the Berliner Ensemble faded, Frank Castorf’s Volksbühne emerged to

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eclipse the Deutsches from another direction. One cannot rule out the possibility that Germany may yet establish a National Theatre, since Spain (and maybe Italy) have done this so recently, even in an era of declining interest in nationalism in Europe, but intercity and intra-city rivalries make this, I believe, most unlikely. Both the Deutsches Theater and the Berliner Ensemble are members of the transnational Union of European Theatres, and that organization today seems much more truly representative of their interests and orientation.

Notes 1. www.red-firm.ns.co.yu/english/english.htm, accessed 26 February 2007. 2. Lennox Robinson (1951), pp. 125–6. 3. Loren Kruger (1992), p. 125. I disagree with the view of Kruger (this volume) on the date of the founding of the Habima theatre. The theatrical record and, indeed, the account of its history given by the current Habima theatre itself, fix the place and date of its founding as Moscow, 1917. There was an amateur theatre group run by Nahum Zemach in Bialystock in 1912, and although it was to form the kernel of the Habima, it was not the Habima, nor was it set up as a model of a National Theatre. 4. Quoted in Maria M. Delgado (2003), p. 171.

3 The National Stage and the Naturalized House: (Trans)National Legitimation in Modern Europe Loren Kruger

‘Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say, historical error, is a crucial factor, in the creation of a nation.’ 1 Ernst Renan ‘It is not enough to reunite with the people in a past where they no longer exist … We must rather focus on that zone of hidden fluctations where the people can be found.’ 2 Frantz Fanon The idea of the National Theatre, the movements inspired by this idea, and the institutions established under its aegis in Europe since the eighteenth century, have more often than not preceded the nation-states that they claimed to represent. The leaders of these movements and institutions were usually actor-managers whose social status was ambiguous, or intellectuals who, as members of the educated middle classes, lacked political representation in the monarchies and principalities of the period, and saw in the theatre an alternative occasion for national representation. From the German principalities and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the eighteenth century to the nineteenthand early twentieth-century nationalist agitation against Prussian, Austrian, Russian, or Ottoman hegemony in Czech, Slovak, Magyar, Polish, and South Slavic-speaking territories, the founders of National Theatres tried to cultivate national consciousness through the creation of a national repertoire as opposed to the internationally dominant French comedy and Italian opera, a broad national audience as opposed to an aristocratic coterie, and a stable public institution in a capital or would-be capital city, as opposed to an itinerant troupe, which might stand in for the as-yet-unconstituted nation state. While many of these would-be National Theatres performed in buildings with some claim to represent the nation, such as the Theatre of the Estates opened in Prague in 1797, many others, most notoriously the writers and companies claiming to represent Poland at the time of its occupation and partition by three imperial powers (1767–1918), could represent the nation only virtually 34

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in exile. This tendency continued beyond Europe into the twentieth century, as diasporic or disenfranchised groups from the Jewish intellectuals who founded Habima as a prototype of a Hebrew National Theatre in Bialystock, in what is now Belarus, in 1912 (not, as is commonly repeated, in Moscow in 1918), to the anti-colonial activists who established the Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1941, sought in National Theatre institutions the emblem of a nation as yet only imagined.3 This capsule history shows us not only that the idea of the National Theatre often preceded the actual institution but also that national theatre has always existed in a transnational field. In other words, evidently transnational conditions, from debates about the authority of imperial languages such as French or German in the eighteenth century to arguments about theatres catering to tourists rather than citizens in the twenty-first, have shaped the theory and the practice of national theatre from the outset. Far from being a consequence of an allegedly twenty-first-century condition of obsolescence, the transnational character of national theatre, whether acknowledged or not, has affected conceptions of repertoire, location and audience and thus conditions of its legitimation or, better, its naturalization, from the earliest movements. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide theoretical coordinates for analyzing the resolutely transnational terms of legitimating national theatre in modern Europe. I will draw predominantly from European examples but will also use contrasting cases from outside Europe to illuminate the force of the transnational fields shaping European national theatres. Before unravelling the tangled etymology of native, nation, and naturalization as they emerge in modern Europe, by which I understand the Europe of the Enlightenment and beyond, we should acknowledge what may be called the natural claims of National Theatres. To be sure, public theatres with indigenous-language repertoires, and thus with claims to an apparently natural national homogeneity, emerged earlier than the eighteenth century, primarily in monarchies whose ruling language was by and large also the language of trade and everyday life: in sixteenth-century Castillian Spain, with playwrights such as Lope de Rueda (1510–65) and Lope de Vega (1562–1635) in Madrid; in Tudor and Stuart England, with playwrights from Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) to Ben Jonson (1572–1637), and the licensing of the Queen’s Men (1583) and later the King’s Men (1603) by the Court-appointed Master of the Revels in London; in Bourbon Paris, the Comédie-Française received an exclusive patent for French drama from Louis XIV in 1680, as did the Royal Theatres of Denmark (1772) and Sweden (1773) for their respective languages, and, in the Netherlands, a rare republican example, the Schouwburg opened in Amsterdam in 1638.4 Nonetheless these institutions, like the nation-states housing them, were exceptions in a pre-revolutionary Europe where princes and subjects did not often share a common, let alone national, language. The rival regional attempts to create a National Theatre and thus at least the ideal of a nation out of German-speaking areas divided by religion,

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dialect, and dynastic politics in the eighteenth century, rather than the single theatre in the capital sponsored by the monarchs of the seventeenth, became the model for nineteenth-century programmes of theatrical nationhood that would resist imperial hegemony (whether Napoleonic, Russian, Prussian, Austrian, or Danish) through national theatre. In The National Stage, I used the term ‘theatrical nationhood’ to denote the representation of the nation not only in the theatre but by the theatre and to bring to light the ambiguous if not outright contradictory character of the theory and practice of staging the nation, of constituting in the audience the synecdoche of the people while also, in key instances, standing in for an absence of an imperfect nation-state.5 The first attempt to create a National Theatre occurred not under princely patronage but under bourgeois auspices in the free trading city-state of Hamburg (1766–69). The Hamburg National Theatre founded by the actormanager Konrad Ackermann (1710–71) and the critic Johann Friedrich Löwen (1727–71), who published a defence of a National Theatre in 1766, was supported financially by Hamburg merchants and bankers and, critically, by the playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1719–81). Later German-language National Theatre projects in Prussia (Gotha 1775, Berlin 1786, Breslau 1797), Bavaria (Mannheim 1777, Munich 1778), Saxony (Weimar 1791) or Austria (Vienna 1776) enjoyed princely patronage and some (as in Berlin, Gotha, and Vienna) suffered royal restrictions on modern themes in the repertoire. The most enterprising included new drama that poured national themes into fluid forms that combined Shakespeare with Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) and purportedly national costume; Die Räuber (The Robbers) by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), which had its premiere in Mannheim in 1782, was the first of a series of his plays on national themes, culminating with Wilhelm Tell (Weimar 1804). Despite Romantic elements in his plays, Schiller’s influential statement, ‘What can a good stable theatre actually achieve?’ (1784), rested on Enlightenment principles of moral education, advanced by Lessing and his mentor, Denis Diderot, of ‘the stage as a moral institution’ and also invoked Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s hope, expressed in his Lettre à d’Alembert (1758), that the assembly of an audience of citizens, particular in a citystate small enough to bring together all citizens, would constitute a national assembly.6 Schiller’s idea of a theatre that might create the nation has become something of a commonplace in discussions of National Theatre movements, but his assertion that the National Theatre will generate the nation, ‘in a word, if we … have a national theatre … , we should indeed become a nation’, sounds commonplace precisely because it has profoundly influenced not only Central European National Theatre movements, including those reacting against perceived German-language hegemony, but also those beyond Europe and beyond any immediate German influence, such as the IPTA in India, whose sources were the national popular theatre movements of Romain Rolland and

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Firmin Gémier.7 While Schiller quotes Johann Gottfried Herder’s notion of a natural, essential [wesentlich] and necessary [notwendig] kinship between nation (in its atavistic variant as Volk) and language (p. 806), he revises Herder’s Romantic notion of essentially racial kinship by proposing a rational civic relation between the ‘thinking better half of the people’ [Volk] and the deliberate construction of a nation-state [Staat].8 Examined more closely, however, this assertion reveals not only the power of the idea of National Theatre to motivate nation-building but also the contradiction at its heart. Schiller’s declaration rests on the assumption that the nation-to-be-created is already present, singular, and distinct in the minds of those creating it, even though its actual absence from their lives suggests that its distinctive character is as yet imagined – or invented. More pointedly, proponents of national singularity may run athwart of the historical facts of multiple, entangled identities and cultural indebtedness. Under pressure from past and present conflict about political, linguistic and cultural identities (plural), appeals to national purity can work only if, as Ernst Renan famously asserts (see my first epigraph), they forget these historical facts and the ‘deeds [faits] of violence … at the origin of all political formations.’9 In the context of the German polities vying for theatrical nationhood in the eighteenth century, the violence to forget would be the Thirty Years War a century before; by the time Renan wrote his piece a century or so after Schiller’s manifesto, the object of creative oblivion [oubli] would include the violent creation of the so-called Second German Reich. Considering the erasure [oubli] of violence might lead latter-day critics to argue, as I did in The National Stage a decade or so ago, that the nation so staged is ‘less an indisputable fact than an object of speculation’.10 As an object of speculation, theatrical nationhood is not a wisp of ideological vapour but rather the product and production of struggle. Renan’s stress not only on violence and fakery but also on the oblivion to which national memory consigns both, would encourage me today to see theatrical nationhood not merely as an object of speculation or invention but also as an act of naturalization, which requires both violence and its forgetting. Unravelling the tangled etymology of native, nation, and naturalization undoes assertions in the wake of Herder that might still defend the natural character of national belonging. The Oxford English Dictionary defines naturalization as the ‘action of admitting an alien to the privilege of a nativeborn citizen’.11 The act that transforms alien subject into citizen and thus allows the alien to take on the role and ‘privilege’ of the ‘native-born’ also highlights the theatrical character of nationhood and the processes of representation, legitimation, and contestation that constitute the effective and affective affinities of citizenship. It foregrounds the staged enactment of national subjects and of the national public whose acknowledgment legitimates such subjects as national. Naturalization, despite its gesture back to nature, speaks performance rather than identity, assumed affiliation rather

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than hereditary ties of blood, learned lines rather than the mother tongue. As Steve Wilmer puts it, National Theatres are founded on assumptions of historical, linguistic and cultural continuity, which persist despite the facts that contradict them.12 Chief among these facts even in the so-called ‘age of nationalism’ has been the mutability of nation-states or, even with an established polity, the persistence of disputed borders, most tellingly in Europe in the case of Poland, shrunk, partitioned and apparently erased for more than a century. Also telling was the persistence of imperial languages in institutions founded on the principle of linguistic self-determination: the first production at the first designated Czech National Theatre, for instance, was a translation of the farce Herzog Michel from the dominant imperial language, German, in 1771 and at the Polish Comedy Theatre, later hailed as the first Polish National Theatre, a translation of Molière’s Les Fâcheux; Habima likewise performed Hebrew translations of plays written in Yiddish, a diasporic language despised by its members even though some spoke better Yiddish than Hebrew; and the Irish National Theatre Society was from the outset (1903) divided by debates about the appropriate national language. Yet, despite these contradictions between assertions of natural belonging and critiques in the name of conscious nation-building and undoing, naturalization takes: that is, it enacts a convincing portrayal of national belonging and provides the ground, as the ongoing presence of National Theatres in Europe shows, for institutions and not merely for ideas of theatrical nationhood. As a performance, naturalization speaks to the dramaturgy as well as the moving tableau of national belonging; it reminds us that dramaturgy implies script, rehearsal and repetition rather than a singular act. If repetition can naturalize the contradictions in these performances, the illusion can be sustained and competing languages, contexts and mises en scène forgotten or buried under the prestige of the institution. The material evidence in the form of the institution and its house and the attachment of participants on stage and in the auditorium to this institution should caution critics against reducing projects or histories of National Theatre to mere reification of an imagined community (or, in the original Marxist Verdinglichung, the reduction of social relations to the thing of community.) Naturalization highlights both the power of the institution and the process of its legitimation and thus provides a more useful guiding term for conceiving simultaneously of the ideological illusion and the material weight of theatrical nationhood. Further, by highlighting acts, ceremonies, performances, the concept of naturalization picks up a key point that literary readers of Renan such as Homi Bhabha often miss. While Bhabha uses Renan’s emphasis on the shared past of a nation, ‘a glorious heritage and regrets’ as the ground for yoking together nation and narration, he overlooks Renan’s attention to the theatricality of nationhood and to the summoning of the nation’s citizens as the national audience of the staging of the nation as a ‘daily plebiscite [de tous les jours]’.13 Although he cites neither Rousseau nor Schiller at this point, Renan reiterates

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the claim made in slightly different terms by both: that the physical assembly of the audience in one place is a necessary condition for representing the nation and for the rational transformation of archaic attachments (Herder’s Volk) into rational civic relations (Schiller’s Staat). This notion of assembly as the necessary, even sufficient condition of national becoming, however utopian, distinguishes theatrical nationhood from the imagined community proposed by Benedict Anderson.14 Anderson’s notion of the simultaneous interpellation of millions of people who are not present to each other but rather connected by print and more recently by electronic media distributed quickly over great distances undoubtedly provides a more historically plausible account of institutions and practices that might unify citizens in the modern nation-state than, say, Rousseau’s view of a city-state small enough to allow for the complete assembly of all citizens in one place, but its emphasis on simultaneous non-presence does not account for the perhaps impractical, but still tenacious, appeal of collective presence in the construction of nationhood. While Anderson’s notion of a national convocation emerging out of a network of simultaneous non-presence aptly encapsulates the abstract and intangible character of citizenship in modern representative democracy, Rousseau’s and Schiller’s utopian assemblies offered their contemporaries a compelling idea of theatrical nationhood, combining in paradox simultaneous physical presence with the ontological distance between actor and audience, which continues to resonate with ours. Where Rousseau’s utopia rested on the limited foundation of a small citystate and aspired to the heavens in an open-air assembly sous le ciel, Schiller attempted to conjure up out of his specific regional location (the National Theatre of Mannheim) a synecdochic instance of a national house.15 While the occasional event would try to create a national house in a combination of open-air assembly and regional synecdoche, strikingly in the Federal Parade in 1787 Philadelphia to ‘raise the federal roof’ over the city and nation of brotherly love and sociable work, the multiplication of regional competitors would in nineteenth-century Europe at least lose ground to imperial centres and National Theatres designed at least in part to reflect imperial grandeur rather than democratic inclusiveness.16 Before looking at concretely located edifices, however, I would like to highlight the key paradox shared by the utopian texts – the assembly of the audience as the avatar of the assembled nation, even if a single theatre edifice can perforce contain only a synecdochic fraction – and to suggest that this national assembly, rather than the linguistic or cultural consistency of the repertoire, is the essential point of theatrical nationhood. In the majority of cases in Europe, institutions expressly named ‘the National Theatre’ have tended to act as stand-ins for the nation-state. The work, ideological as well as material, that supports the creation and naturalization of the institution as national and thus also the forgetting of those elements discarded along the way, may carry more weight than the edifice

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in which the institution may be housed. Before looking at the first of those theatres to call themselves ‘national’, in other words, the German-language competitors I listed at the outset, I think it is worth considering what appears to be a key exception to the norm I’ve proposed, in which National Theatre precedes nation-state. Unlike most National Theatres, the Comédie-Française was established at least a generation after the consolidation of the French state. Albeit without the label ‘national’, the institution can lay claim to continuous official representation of French theatre since it received an exclusive royal patent in 1680 and, for a shorter time, continuous residence in the same house since the reunification of the company in the theatre on the rue de Richelieu in 1799. Nonetheless, these claims for temporal and spatial continuity and for national synecdochic authority give way on closer scrutiny. The company occupied a specially built free-standing house (later known as the Odéon) only in 1782, which they renamed the Théâtre de la Nation in 1789, only to have the majority of members loyal to the monarchy arrested in 1793 by the Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre, despite performances of plays critical of absolute monarchy such as Charles IX, ou la Sainte-Barthélemy (Charles IX or the Saint-Bartholomew [Massacre]) (1790) and Henry VIII (1791) by Marie-Joseph Chénier (1764–1811). The Revolutionary minority broke away to establish the Théâtre de la République in the house on the rue de Richelieu and to perform indoor versions of the outdoor festivals that commemorated the first and second anniversaries of the Revolution, such as l’Offrande à la Liberté (an operatic setting of La Marseillaise) by François Gossec in 1792. The latter event and the Revolutionary festivals that inspired it may not be canonical literary works, but they reflect a radical, if short-lived, transformation prompted by the Revolution of the institution, the performance forms, the location, and the audience address of theatrical nationhood.17 Although the Comédie-Française itself reverted after the Revolution to the task of preserving a canonical tradition of French drama, the Revolutionary challenge to the norms of a literary repertoire, a central house in the capital and a discerning audience, was revived by socialists and other radicals in the late nineteenth century, such as Maurice Pottécher (1867–1960) of the Théâtre Populaire in Bussang, Louis Lumet (1872–1923) of the Théâtre Civique and other promoters of théâtres populaires in working-class Paris, including Jean Jaurès, leader of the Socialist Party.18 These projects, which proposed decentralized location (in working-class suburbs of Paris or in the provinces), vernacular repertoire and democratized pricing or free performances, invoked less the elite National Theatre appealing, in Schiller’s words, to the ‘thinking, better half of the people’ than to Rousseau’s notion of an active national assembly and its more militant interpretation by LouisSébastien Mercier (1740–1814), who called in 1773 for a theatre that might ‘illuminate and arm the people as a whole with reason’.19 Romain Rolland (1866–1944), author of Le théâtre du peuple (1903) and of the mass spectacle

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Danton, staged by the Théâtre Civique in and around the Maison du peuple in Montmartre (1900), moderated this view somewhat with the idea of a theatre that might ‘contain a people’.20 His more conciliatory picture of a national popular institution inspired the first, albeit ambulatory, institution of a Théâtre National Populaire (TNP, 1920), directed by Firmin Gémier (1869–1933), who toured France in a tent before playing the Trocadéro (later Chaillot) in Paris. Although the first TNP did not last long, it and its predecessors introduced programmatic elements such as decentralization and popularization by cheap seats, and targeted solicitation of non-theatre-going audiences, which would inform the revived TNP under Jean Vilar (1912–71) from 1951 and later Roger Planchon (1931– ) at Villeurbanne near Lyon (1968). Although Paris continues to dominate French cultural production, the official history of decentralization and the unofficial but pertinent history of open-air or itinerant theatrical nationhood offer models other than the strict identity of National Theatre and national house. Without directly inheriting any French model of a national decentralized popular theatre, the Federal Theatre of the United States (1935–39) succeeded despite Congressional harassment, conflicting pressure to focus on professional centres like New York and to reach under-served outposts, and inevitably perhaps uneven distribution across regions and ethnicities in creating theatre that was, in the words of director Hallie Flanagan ‘national in scope, regional in emphasis, and American in democratic attitude’.21 In contrast to the French case, in which the synecdochic authority of the central institution and the centralizing state was challenged rather late and in which the appellation ‘National Theatre’ appears first, in 1789, attached to a house under siege during the Revolution and second, in 1920, to an itinerant popular, rather than a stable elite, theatre, the German-language institutions competing for German theatrical nationhood invoke the authority of a singular National Theatre all the more emphatically at the outset and predate any reference to ‘National Theatre’ in France, or for that matter, England or Spain, both early modern nation-states with significant theatre institutions. Without maintaining some normative priority for the German case, I would nonetheless argue for the conceptual and historical value of focusing on the first explicit claims for a National Theatre at the moment of its enactment or, to put it slightly differently, on the dramatic conflict between different enactments of the same nation. As the range of competing venues calling themselves Nationaltheater in the century or so of nationalistic and theatrical ferment in German-speaking Central Europe from 1766 (the founding of the National Theatre in Hamburg) to 1871 (the consolidation of the Prussian state and with it the central power of Berlin) indicates, the idea of a German National Theatre was vested less in the territory of a particular polity than in the claims of particular institutions to channel the unifying force of language and culture, in part in the face of outside invasion (by Napoleon), in part in the service of competing claims of political unification (in the

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Austrian vs. Prussian empires). These claims tend rather to underscore competition between regions and representatives of Greater (or lesser) Germany and thus the invented rather than the natural character of national belonging in general. The earliest of these mostly short-lived experiments, the Hamburg National Theatre, was founded by Konrad Ackermann, who had previously founded a German theatre on the Prussian periphery in Königsburg (now Kaliningrad in Russia), and was supported by prominent merchants keen to highlight the political and economic as well as cultural independence of the city-state from the expansionist Prussians. This political imperative did not determine the repertoire but it certainly affected the theatre. As Lessing recalled in his dramaturgical notes on the enterprise, published as the Hamburgische Dramaturgie in 1767–9, the theatre did not completely replace the internationally dominant French comedy with a German national repertoire, and fleshed out the latter only by including as if he were German another international phenomenon, albeit one which was profoundly to shape German drama – William Shakespeare. Lessing’s own dramatic contribution, the comedy Minna von Barnhelm, defended the German gentry’s independence and dignity against French hegemony but worked within the thoroughly French genre of the marriage comedy and did not tackle tensions between local princes and their subjects. By contrast, Schiller, whose play Die Räuber (The Robbers) premiered at the National Theatre in Mannheim almost a generation later (1782), used Shakespeare as a model for both the form and content of his historical drama to challenge explicitly the tyranny of absolute rulers and perhaps implicitly his former lord, the Duke of Württemberg, who was so provoked by the performance that he forbad Schiller to write again – in vain. Although hailed by some as ‘the first play nourished by Württemberg soil’, the action was relocated in the medieval rather than in the contemporary period and the challenge to tyranny by play and theatre was received with controversy.22 While the Mannheim project and its Hamburg predecessor appear retrospectively as imposing milestones in the progress of National Theatre movements, their influence has been secured more by the supplementary statements by key players Lessing and Schiller than by any long-lasting institution, company or building. The erection of a building does not in itself overturn the power of the work or establish the centrality of a would-be capital city but, as the increased prestige of Berlin under Prussian hegemony shows, political dominance can certainly reinforce the legitimacy if not the aesthetic predominance of particular institutions. The Royal National Theatre established in Berlin under the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm in 1789 may have owed its artistic authority to its director August Iffland (1796–1815) but its endurance depended on the Prussian state and its power to draw other notable participants such as the architect and designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who collaborated with Iffland’s successor, Carl von Brühl (1815–37)

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on building a new theatre in the Gendarmenmarkt. Neither artistic nor political authority sufficed to maintain its pre-eminence however. With the end of the Wilhelminian Reich and the establishment of the Weimar Republic in 1918, The Royal Theatre became the Staatstheater. The Staatstheater shone as a beacon of artistic experiment and political challenge under the direction of the innovative Leopold Jessner, only to return to political conformism under Gustav Gründgens, who accepted the Nazi appointment as Intendant. The building was destroyed by bombing near the close of the Second World War and was reopened in the 1980s as a concert hall subsidized by the GDR (East German) government. The institution that today presents itself as the keeper of German National Theatre tradition has never borne the name of National Theatre. The Deutsches Theater was founded as a ‘society of actors’ on the model of the Comédie-Française in 1883 well after the consolidation of Prussia as the Reich, and occupied the building designed in 1849 by Eduard Titz since that time, under Prussian, Weimar, Nazi, Soviet, GDR, and now Federal Republican auspices. Although the institution’s promotional literature emphasizes the continuity emblematized by the building, it must also acknowledge radical shifts in artistic and political stewardship signalled by the very different regimes of the naturalist pioneer Otto Brahm (1895–1905), the master-showman Max Reinhardt (1905–33), the skilful diplomat Heinz Hilpert (1933–45), the socialist humanist Wolfgang Langhoff (1945–63), and a succession of Socialist Unity Party (SED) functionaries until the more liberal Intendanz of Dieter Mann (1984–90) opened up space for the likes of antihumanist pre-post-socialist director Alexander Lang. Since unification, the Deutsches Theater has resumed a role comparable to that of the ComédieFrançaise with the classical revival of Matthias Langhoff (1991–2001) and Berndt Wilms (2002– ).23 Any implicit claim to National Theatre status by the Deutsches Theater would have to be tested against the rival claims of a series of Volksbühnen. Although often compared to the théâtres populaires, the German institutions were backed more consistently by the German Socialist party and, in the Weimar Republic, the social democratic state. Where the itinerant Théâtre National Populaire came to rest in the Trocadéro, a cavernous and unsuitable music hall, the Berlin Freie Volksbühne enjoyed its own custom-built house on Bülowplatz in the working-class eastern district from 1914 and, at its height, over a million socialist subscribers. The house was, however, no guarantee of a stable platform for a challenge from the left to nominally socialist heritage culture; during the turbulent Weimar Republic, theatre people affiliated with the Communist Party, such as Erwin Piscator, in turn challenged the authority of the Volksbühne from a series of changing venues across Berlin. In the period of postwar partition (1949–89), official SED policy stressed both the centrality of Berlin and the GDR’s claim to be the only rightful heir of the German dramatic tradition from Goethe and Schiller to Brecht. While the ruling party sought, after the death of Helene Weigel in 1970, to

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press both Deutsches Theater and the Berliner Ensemble into this accommodationist cultural sphere, the Volksbühne (on the square formerly known as Bülowplatz, now named for Communist martyr Rosa Luxemburg) from the 1970s, under Benno Besson, provided a stage for critical Brechtians expelled from the Berliner Ensemble (such as Manfred Karge, Matthias Langhoff and Heiner Müller) and offered a more consistent challenge to GDR heritage policy than either the Deutsches Theater or the Berliner Ensemble. Even if we accept the SED version of socialist nationalism, this rivalry makes the search for a National Theatre in the GDR of limited value. In West Germany, on the other hand, the isolation of Berlin encouraged regional rivalry among major theatres in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg as well as among theatres in West Berlin such as the Freie Volksbühne and the Schaubühne (neither official state theatres), with the notable absence, in implicit recognition of the historic disgrace of German nationalism, of any claims to National Theatre status. Indeed, by uncoupling theatre from a racialistic Volk and by favouring instead the cultural affiliation proposed by Schiller’s aesthetic state, in the sense proposed by his Letters on Aesthetic Education of Gesinnung (or state of mind) rather than Staat (or polity), the postwar German examples point beyond membership in a singular naturalized house to elective rather than supposedly natural affinities, affinities that are metropolitan and transnational, whose institutional emblems are international festivals and the companies that dominate them. The idea of the National Theatre in anticipation of the nation-state, which had animated nineteenth-century Europe did not, to be sure, vanish in the twentieth century. Outside Europe the idea of National Theatre inspired anti-colonial institutions in emergent nationstates, such as the Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) which provided an umbrella for indigenous theatre from 1942 (before independence in 1948) to the 1980s, or provided a place and occasion for staging a utopian alternative to a corrupted nation, as the Market Theatre’s anti-apartheid plays challenged the South Africa of the apartheid state; but these institutions represent on the one hand regional, and on the other transnational, affiliations that traverse rather than neatly fit the national model. While the Market was dubbed ‘South Africa’s only National Theatre’ by its director Barney Simon in the 1980s and thus is placed in the tradition that claims synecdochic authority for a single central institution, this authority rested on the international validation of the anti-apartheid movement worldwide.24 Conversely, the IPTA’s respect for local or intra-national diversity suggests, in keeping with the association’s resolutely secular constitution, a recognition of the plurality of the people or, as Fanon puts it in my second epigraph: instead of attempting to ‘get back to the people in a past where they no longer exist’, ‘we must rather focus on that zone of hidden fluctuations where the people can be found’.25 Reading Fanon’s injunction in the light of both intra-national and international pressure on claims for national singularity brings to the fore the

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mutability of national borders especially, but not only, in the postcolonial world. Fanon’s critique of colonial, neocolonial and indeed postcolonial tendencies to reify the people and the nation has ramifications that Europeans in the transnational era should also heed. In turn of the century Europe, the end of the Cold War and of Soviet socialist hegemony in many ways saw the attempt to ‘get back to the people in the past’, the emergence of new nation-states from Slovakia to Serbia, and their efforts to secure legitimacy by reviving a Herderian notion of their essential and enduring nation singularity and enshrining that essence in a national house. These developments seem anomalous, if not archaic, however, when matched against the trend in Western Europe, now in motion for a half a century, towards institutions at once regional and transnational. Especially after the Second World War, subsidized theatres that may have been national in name in practice tended rather to reflect and reinforce the international prestige of their companies, repertoires and cities. Even if the language of performance could claim to be national, such theatres as Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, Grotowski’s Laboratory, Giorgio Strehler’s Piccolo Teatro, and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop were able already in the 1950s and 1960s to draw transnational audiences at home and on tour. In succeeding decades, companies led by Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, and Peter Brook and, beyond Europe, Robert Lepage, created companies whose actors, audiences and funders became increasingly transnational in origin and intent. The prestige of these transnational theatres based in metropolitan centres (not only capitals) and subsidized increasingly, as national state subsidy declines into the twenty-first century, by metropolitan and transnational capital, has not gone unchallenged, however. On the one hand, there has been the rare attempt to create alternative transnational institutions outside the wealthy North. In the 1970s, flush with oil capital, Nigeria built the Pan-African National Theatre and invited companies from Africa and the African diaspora to animate the space and so create a postcolonial transnationalism to match the metropolitan example. In the 1980s and 1990s, after the oil bust and a succession of corrupt military governments, however, the house came to represent the bankruptcy of Nigeria’s claim to lead a renewed Pan-African movement.26 On the other hand, a more familiar and perhaps more effective challenge has been launched against Northern appropriation of the cultural heritage of the South. In the famous case of the Mahabharatha, Indian intellectuals like Rustom Bharucha have argued that the epic, refashioned as a nine-hour play and later cut further to sixand three-hour television versions by Peter Brook and his scriptwriter JeanClaude Carrière, reduce India’s national story to mere Indian flavour for the jaded Western palate.27 While the debate and the counter-production of alternative stage versions of the epic did bring back after a fashion some of the expropriated cultural capital, the controversy also highlighted the ongoing

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asymmetry structuring transnational cultural exchange. The ‘international’ Mahabharatha did indeed tour India but its performance in English or French with occasional Sanskrit ornament appears to be at home not at the source of the epic but rather framed by the highly constructed, superbly equipped ‘ruin’ of its home base, the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, or its surrogate in the Majestic Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. Looking back at the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century National Theatre movements through the prism of the international and regional developments of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries allows us not only to see the former as a historically grounded phenomenon, but also to perceive more clearly the limits of the idea and practice of national theatre in an era of transnationalism. The mobility of transnational capital and the shrinking capacity of nation-states even in the wealthy West to maintain the subsidized largesse of the Cold War era have reduced funding to prestige institutions in major metropolitan centres. While charismatic cosmopolitans like Brook or Lepage may enjoy national as well as transnational funding, their enterprises escape any attempts on the part of host states to claim them, as Québec has attempted to do with Lepage, as national treasures, as Jen Harvie and Erin Hurley argue, using the company’s international prestige to buttress the province’s nationalist aspirations.28 Nominally National Theatres like the Comédie-Française, the Deutsches Theater or, indeed the much younger National Theatre of Great Britain (founded as a company only in 1962 and housed permanently only since 1976) must contend with competitors not only in rival theatres but in the much larger scale production of the culture industry. Even if we ignore the competition from the cinema, now itself quite archaic, and more recent combinations of aural, visual and tactile media entertainments, the theatre as an emblem of national prestige and house of the people seems increasingly archaic as theatres, especially in English-language centres, such as London and New York, increasingly appeal to a transnational base of tourist consumers. While the trend to the theatrical manufacture of consumable product (as in the transnational ‘American musical’) may be slowed by the minority of states and cultural ministries still able to fund theatres in national as well as regional languages, for example, in Catalan, it cannot be halted. In this context, national and regional theatre survives not by escaping the market economy but by creating and filling niche markets with prestige product. The product here is not only the show but also the house, as destination and object of display. At the present moment, then, the question that emerges for further discussion is not exactly: do National Theatre houses play an important role in the legitimation and naturalization of the national stage? Clearly, they do, but that importance has changed character. To work with that change, the question might better be: when and why do arguments about the building or, more broadly, in its naturalized form as the national house, take precedence – or not – over questions of language and cultural affiliation? Or,

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conversely: when and why does the status or central location of a National Theatre building seem less relevant or even irrelevant to the legitimacy of a National Theatre movement? Or, to pose a question that cuts through this opposition: might the focus on a singular building and its presumed location in the nation’s centre prematurely exclude from discussion, institutions, from the first ambulatory TNP to the US Federal Theatre to the IPTA, that threw over the fixed building, the edifice designed to contain (and possibly constrain) the ‘people in the past’, in favour of the mobile and flexible attempt to reach the people in their ‘fluctuating movement’? It would be folly to attempt to answer these questions in full, even for the few National Theatre movements and institutions I have mentioned so far, but I think the questions help us plot the historical and ideological limits of National Theatre projects and the current limits as well as the potential of the investigations represented in this collection.

Notes 1. Ernst Renan (1996) ‘Qu’est-ce qu’est une nation?’, in Qu’est-ce qu’est une nation et autres écrits politiques, ed. Raoul Girardet (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale), p. 227; trans. Martin Thom, ‘What is a Nation?’, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.) (1990), p. 11. 2. Frantz Fanon (2002), Les damnés de la terre (Paris; La découverte), p. 216; trans. Richard Philcox (2005), p. 163. 3. On the origins of Habima in Bialystock, see Emanuel Levy (1979). On the Indian People’s Theatre Association, see Nandi Bhatia (2004), pp. 76–94. 4. For primary sources for the origins and status of Central and Northern European institutions mentioned in this chapter, see the statements collected in Senelick (ed.) (1991) and in George Brandt and W. Hogendoorn (eds.) (1991). 5. Loren Kruger (1992), p. 3. 6. Friedrich Schiller (1976), ‘Was kann eine stehende Bühne eigentlich wirken?’ in Werke in Drei Bände. (Munich: Hanser), p. 719; ‘What can a good stable theatre actually achieve?’ in Brandt and Hogedoorn, op.cit., p. 217; Jean-Jacques Rousseau ([1758] 1967) Lettre à d’Alembert sur son essai ‘Genève’ (Paris: Garnier). 7. Schiller, op.cit., p. 728; ‘What can a stable theatre … ?’, p. 220. 8. Johann Gottfried Herder ([1773] 1968) ‘Abhandlungen über den Ursprung der Sprache’, in his Werke (Munich: Hanser), Vol. 1, p. 806; Schiller, op.cit., p. 727; ‘What can a stable theatre … ?’, p. 220. 9. Renan, op.cit., p. 227; ‘What is a nation?’, p. 11. 10. Kruger, op.cit., p. 3. 11. Oxford English Dictionary s.v. ‘naturalization’; citation retrieved on August 25, 2006 from http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.uchicago.edu 12. S.E. Wilmer (1999) ‘Reifying Imagined Communities: Nationalism, PostColonialism and Theatre Historiography’, Nordic Theatre Studies 12: 94–103. 13. Renan, op.cit., p. 241; ‘What is a Nation?’ p. 19; Bhabha, (1990), p. 3. 14. Benedict Anderson, (1983). 15. Rousseau, op.cit., p. 223; Schiller, op.cit., p. 727; ‘What can a stable theatre … ?’ p. 220. 16. On ‘raising the Federal roof’ in performance, see Laura Rigal (1998), pp. 21–54.

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17. See F.W. J. Hemmings (1994). 18. See Kruger, op.cit., pp. 31–82 19. Schiller, op.cit., p. 727; ‘What can a stable theatre … ?’ p. 220; Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1776) Du théâtre (Amsterdam: van Harreveldt), p. v. 20. Romain Rolland (1903), Le théâtre du peuple (Paris: Fayard), pp. 119–33. 21. Hallie Flanagan ([1940] 1985), pp. 372–3. 22. Anonymous contemporary review cited in the notes to Die Räuber in Schiller, Werke, p. 156. 23. A summary of this chronology can be found on the Deutsches Theater website at: http://www.deutschestheater.de. 24. The phrase appears in an undated policy statement published by the Market Theatre, probably to coincide with the theatre’s tenth anniversary and the centenary of the city of Johannesburg in 1986. 25. Fanon, Damnés de la terre, p. 216; Wretched of the Earth, p. 163. 26. See Andrew Apter (1996) ‘The Pan-African Nation: Oil Money and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria’, Public Culture 8: 441–6. 27. Rustom Bharucha, ‘A View from India’, in David Williams (ed.) (1991), Peter Brook and the Mahabharatha: Critical Perspectives (London: Routledge). For a thorough and illuminating analysis of this adaptation in the context of multiple and, in many ways, more challenging local stagings of the Mahabharatha in India, see Aparna Dharwadker (2005), pp. 163–217, and for a list of these adaptations, see pp. 418–19. 28. Jen Harvie and Erin Hurley (1999), ‘States of Play. Locating Québec in the Performances of Robert Lepage, Ex Machina and the Cirque du Soleil’, Theatre Journal 51: 300.

4 Towards a History of National Theatres in Europe Bruce McConachie

Any short chapter concerning major developments in two-hundred-andfifty years of European history must narrow the field of discussion or risk windy generalities that rarely connect with the obdurate facts of the historical record. Accordingly, I will tighten my focus in two ways. First, I will primarily examine prototypical National Theatres between 1760 and 2006. While as many as three hundred theatre companies and performance venues probably called themselves ‘National Theatres’ during these years, I will comment primarily on those that fit prototypical patterns of the type as it changed over time. Second, I will restrict my interest to National Theatres that were or aimed to be representative of a nation-state, a people with a language and culture living within a bounded and sovereign political entity. As is already apparent from several chapters in this volume, the hyphenated term is an important qualifier; some states ignored their people to begin theatres as a part of their political (often imperial) agendas and many national cultures have maintained theatres that had little connection to real or hoped-for statehood. In my view, connecting National Theatres to the rise and decline of the nation-state in Europe is crucial for a cogent history. Within this framework, I will hazard two assertions that may prove useful to future historians interested in shaping a narrative about the growth and decline of European National Theatres. While it is evident that the idea of nationhood in Europe has changed from 1760 to the present, most historians have focused their attention on political developments as the primary causes of these changes. While not ignoring changing politics and political ideologies, I will emphasize that alterations in major modes of communication also played an important role. In brief, the idea of a nation-state that motivated the founding of National Theatres began in print culture, but shifted in the twentieth century as the mass media of photography, radio, and film inculcated a very different notion of the nation-state. The second assertion follows from the first. I will claim that there have been two major eras of National Theatres in Europe – from 1850 to 1920 and from 1950 to 1980. Most socalled National Theatres before 1850 and after 1980 did not place the idea 49

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of a nation-state at the centre of their vision. European National Theatres committed to nation-states grew out of the bourgeois public sphere of the eighteenth century, a notion of a public steeped in print culture. After 1980, however, as nationally oriented mass communication gradually gave way to globalized and niche-oriented modes of communicating, nation-states fragmented at the hyphen and many European nations no longer looked to their states for an encompassing theatrical community. Throughout, my chapter will primarily draw upon the other contributions in this volume to substantiate my claims. In addition, I will refer to some talks that were delivered at the conference that preceded and substantially informed this anthology, ‘National Theatres of Europe’, which gathered at Trinity College, Dublin in March of 2005. Finally, in a concluding section that must remain mostly conjectural, I will note some of the many sources that inform the substantial scholarship on historical media studies. This includes my own work in the middle chapters of Theatre Histories: An Introduction, co-authored with Phillip B. Zarrilli, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei.1

Prototypes and nationalists What makes a prototypical National Theatre? According to prototype theory in cognitive psychology, prototypes are representative examples of categories graded according to salience.2 In the category of ‘birds’, for instance, some examples are more prototypical, more salient than others. For North American speakers of English, for example, a robin is more prototypical than an eagle and an eagle is more prototypical than a penguin. Degrees of salience decrease rapidly after penguins, until we come to creatures like ostriches, which barely seem to be birds at all. These examples of the bird category share egg-laying, feathers, and wings as common characteristics, but vary widely in size, shape, and ability to fly. As cognitive psychologists point out, people’s categories are usually fuzzy at the edges, often embracing some common traits but lacking clear boundaries and logical coherence. Likewise, we can expect that the category ‘National Theatre’ will also be a fuzzy one. While there are likely to be clear prototypes of the category within an historical era – the ‘robins’ and ‘bluebirds’ of National Theatres – there are many more, as Marvin Carlson notes in his chapter on the proliferation of National Theatres in the twentieth century, that do not share all of the general normative characteristics. What are these characteristics? First, I agree with Loren Kruger that National Theatres must address (or seek to address) a part of the national people that can legitimately represent the whole of it. As she points out, no theatre audience can encompass the whole of a nation; perceived synecdoche, where those in the theatre can stand in for the rest of the nation, must play an important part of the success of any National Theatre among the people of a nation-state. Second, most of the contributors to

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this book would agree that national actors constitute a second characteristic of all National Theatres. Typically, national actors emerge from the nation itself (primarily through the accident of birth) and speak the national language on stage. As perceived by a national audience, national actors also have tended to be synecdochic: they and their signature characters could stand in as the part that represented the whole of the nation. At the heart of National Theatres connected to nation-states (or desired nation-states) was an actor–audience relationship in which both parties could be perceived as representative of the nation. Notice that this National Theatre category is already ‘fuzzy’ in significant ways, even more fuzzy than the category of bird. At any single performance in a National Theatre, the actors on stage and the spectators in the auditorium were unlikely to be as purely representative of the nation as the ideal actor–audience relationship for a National Theatre suggests. A second source of fuzziness lies in the ambiguity of the nation itself. Which groups of people should be included in the idea of a national people, especially if a contiguous geographic area included several genetic traditions and language groups? The idea of a nation, especially a nation bound to a state, depends on boundaries, but all of the contributors to this volume understand the price that Europeans have paid for attempting to separate a national ‘us’ from the ‘them’ of Others. History is the third reason for the fuzziness of National Theatres. Even assuming that most actor–audience relationships in National Theatres were ‘national’ in terms of actors and audiences legitimately representing an idea of the nation, the fixed terms of that coherence, with rare exceptions, have not lasted over time. The last two-hundred-and-fifty years of European history have seen the rise and fall of many nationalisms and nation-states, not to speak of the demise of empires and the suppression of minority peoples with little ambition to form their own nation-states. Nonetheless, despite the fuzziness of the category, it would be foolish to argue that ‘National Theatres’ have not really existed. As theatres founded on a synecdochic actor–audience relationship embedded in a changing sense of nationhood, National Theatres have flourished in Europe and some even continue to this day. If we take legitimate part–whole relationships as the anchor of all definitions of National Theatres, we might next ask about other prototypical characteristics of National Theatres during specific periods of history. As several chapters in this volume make clear, the characteristics of National Theatres in the late nineteenth century, during the height of classical European nationalism, included strong bourgeois patronage, a theatrical repertoire that had as one of its main goals the celebration of the language, traditions, and culture of a people, and a National Theatre building prominently located in what was recognized as the national capital. The synechdochic connection for this National Theatre figured the bourgeoisie in the audience as the legitimate representatives of the nation. Sometimes prototypical national actors represented and glorified such bourgeois characters as representative

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of the nation, but peasant figures were more likely to be elevated as the heroes of their culture. These theatres may or may not have been funded by and responsible to an actual nation-state; many, in fact, opposed the empire in which they were located and gained bourgeois support because of their opposition. From the chapters in this volume and other theatre histories, it is clear that several National Theatres in Central and Eastern Europe conformed most closely to the nineteenth-century prototype described above. By 1885, National Theatres in Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest performed with national-language actors before bourgeois audiences of Czech-, Hungarian-, and Romanian-speakers at prominent theatres in national capitals that celebrated their national cultures. Significantly, none of these national cultures could claim their own nation-states, but bourgeois factions within each nation worked for nationalist freedom. By 1902, nationalists in Norway and Finland had also established National Theatres, again in political situations in which their countries were parts of larger empires. The forerunner of this historical type of National Theatre was the shortlived Hamburg National Theatre, which survived from 1767 to 1769. Crucially, its primary supporters and spectators were Hamburg merchants and bankers who understood themselves to represent the German people. (Unfortunately for this nationalist project, however, few other Germans saw these burgers as their legitimate surrogates.) Like later advocates of National Theatres, these nationalists saw theatre as a cultural means of shaping an eventual German nation-state. The example of the Hamburg National Theatre would inspire later theatrical nationalists in Central and Eastern Europe. Less prototypical of National Theatres were several later German projects in the eighteenth century – mostly because of their princely rather than bourgeois patronage. On the evidence of Julia Listengarten’s chapter, the Maly Theatre in Moscow probably qualifies as a National Theatre on the late nineteenthcentury model, though it was far from prototypical. The Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, however, must be excluded for the reasons Listengarten cites: it primarily glorified the Tsar and the empire, not the Russian people. Her distinction between an imperial theatre and a National Theatre in nineteenth-century Russia primarily rests upon the difference between a theatre dedicated to advance the state and one aimed at an audience that could legitimately represent Russia as a nation-state. The granddaddy of European monarchical theatres, of course, was the Comédie-Française, formed by Louis XIV and governed as an extension of the crown. Although Louis used his theatres to increase the prestige of the French nation, he was much less interested in the French people than he was in imperial power, in Europe and abroad. It is telling that the Comédie-Française hastened to change its name and its image in the wake of the initial stage of the French Revolution. But, as Marvin Carlson informs us, to no avail; the

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new bourgeois rulers of France viewed the Comédie-Française as a part of the ancien regime. In terms of the characteristics of the prototypical nineteenthcentury National Theatre, the pre-Revolutionary Comédie-Française does not fit into the category. Arguably, however, it became a National Theatre in the nineteenth century, a change historians might date from the Hernani riots and the victory of Romanticism in France. Other theatres that originated in monarchies in the eighteenth century also became National Theatres in the nineteenth century. As Rikard Hoogland and Willmar Sauter relate, Gustavus III began the Swedish Royal Theatre (Dramaten) in 1788 and it gradually acquired national legitimacy over the next hundred years. How did the prototypical characteristics of European National Theatres change between 1890 and 1970? ‘National’ actors continued to entertain ‘national’ spectators, but the basis of national representativeness shifted. In most of Europe, a bourgeois audience could no longer legitimately stand in for a national people by 1950 and actor-characters representing the nation tended to be urban workers or other city dwellers with clear links to the masses. As before, majority-language speakers constituted most theatre companies and the celebration of the language of the people remained an important goal in most National Theatres. But the emphasis on national culture was less important than it had been in 1890; international plays with international themes, such as class conflict or the existential nature of man, were playing at National Theatres in postwar Europe. Another significant difference between 1890 and 1970 was the change in venue. In the nineteenth century, establishing the theatre in an impressive building in a central square of the capital, adjacent to other public edifices, was a sine qua non for all prototypical National Theatres. In several instances, a National Theatre building actually preceded a National Theatre company. By 1950, reaching a mass populace was becoming more important than locating the National Theatre in a single venue. To accomplish this goal, some National Theatres, like the Théâtre National Populaire in France, began travelling around the country, while others, like the National Theatre systems in the Scandinavian countries, dispersed to several regional locations. This change from one prominent venue to several regional ones relates to the shift in the synechdochic audience. Replacing the bourgeoisie as the legitimate part that could represent the whole of the nation was a representative cross-section of the populace. If the masses could not easily travel to one theatre, the nation-state had to take several theatres to them. Although regional in location, the new theatres were national in orientation. While the emergence of this mid-twentieth-century model occurred at different times in different countries, it was perhaps most evident in Scandinavia. Pirkko Koski identifies the 1950s as the transition period in Finland. As she reports, a left-wing government tried to nationalize the National Theatre, still owned and run by a bourgeois board of directors. Although the National Theatre successfully resisted the take-over, the days of its pre-eminence as the

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sole representative of theatrical nationhood were effectively over. In 1978, Finland established eight major regional theatres with touring obligations. Arguably, the new model took longer to emerge in Sweden, even though a Swedish National Touring Theatre had been in operation since 1934. The state cultural policy of 1974 that established regional theatres challenged the singularity of the Dramaten in Stockholm. Norway, too, emerged with a network of regional theatres with nation-wide responsibilities in the 1970s. By 1980, multiple, nationally funded theatres were in competition with the older, single sites of National Theatre throughout Scandinavia. If the theatre networks of Scandinavia were the new prototypes for post1950 National Theatre, several theatrical networks in other European nationstates approached those representative examples in degree of salience. France, Greece, and the United Kingdom all had National Theatres located in several regions by the 1980s, although these networks did not achieve the prestige of the Scandinavian prototypes. In the Soviet Union, decentralization and regionalization were also practised, but the lack of a democratic national consensus in the theatre, as in politics generally, meant that broad-scale popular legitimation was denied to most Russian theatres during the Cold War years. In contrast, many theatres of Eastern Europe in the Communist bloc effectively played to anti-Russian sentiment from the 1960s through the 1980s to create popular national audiences. Several Polish theatres in the 1970s, for example, provided ironic examples of popular regional theatres supported by a communist state that turned parts of the nation against the government. Similarly in the Balkans, Yugoslavian communists funded theatres in regional national-language centres that kept nationalist ambitions alive during the Cold War and would fuel the wars of the 1990s after Yugoslavia fell apart. In retrospect, the communist and fascist theatres of the 1920s and 1930s provided some of the prototypical characteristics for the National Theatres that emerged in postwar Europe. Mass spectacles had occurred in several nation-states before the Great War, but no nation-state had sponsored them. After the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they mounted several mass spectacles, notably The Storming of the Winter Palace in 1920. The Communists also organized national Blue Blouse troupes in the mid-1920s, which travelled around the country to spread their ideology. At the same time, Italian Fascists were propagandizing their nation with Thespian Car troupes, as noted by Patricia Gaborik. The mass rallies of the Nazis in Germany, especially the Thingspiel movement, also linked National Theatre to the masses of the nation. Although mass spectacles did not become a characteristic of most postwar European theatres, the idea of taking the theatre to the people that had inspired these large-scale productions not only survived the war but also informed many new National Theatres and theatre systems, especially in Western Europe, after 1950. Behind this shift was a more fundamental one: National Theatres had to perform for the masses and elevate national

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role models that were closer to national urban types.3 Prototypical National Theatres of the mid-twentieth century, unlike their predecessors of the late nineteenth, also celebrated the national cultures of present nation-states, not in regions that hoped to claim political sovereignty in the future. (Because they had to await the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union, National Theatres in the Baltic States, Slovakia, and the Balkans came late to this party.) And the mass of voters in these nation-states increasingly demanded theatre that was accessible and enjoyable for them. If a popular base, state support, and a nationalistic agenda were the major characteristics of this second model of National Theatre, the last of these three prototypical features began to change in the 1970s, even as this second type was solidifying its gains. In France, as David Whitton reports, decentralization actually led to denationalization in some regions. The National Theatre in Strasbourg, for example, adopted a bilingual strategy to include German-speaking citizens as a part of its audience. In his chapter, Marvin Carlson notes that Spanish theatre after Franco also decentralized and, in the process, sometimes elevated regional distinctiveness over national unity. The Teatro Nacional de Cataluny opened in Barcelona in 1997 with national funding to celebrate the distinct language and cultural traditions of Catalonia. Even the Scandinavian National Theatre networks, models of the second type of National Theatre, bowed to regional and multicultural pressures. Both Sweden and Norway established theatres to tour to native peoples in the North, and Finland eventually recognized the Swedish theatre in Helsinki as a ‘national’ theatre. When these new ‘national’ theatres perform before Catalan audiences in Barcelona or Swedish audiences in Helsinki, the actor–audience relationship at the centre of these events generally represents the operation of national synecdoche; actors and audiences become legitimate stand-ins for their national language groups. But most of the people in these minority language groups, including most of the actors and spectators in their theatres, do not wish to form their own nation-states; with few exceptions, they are content to remain within Spain and Finland. Nationalists in Catalonia had fought for several hundred years to secede from Spain and establish their own state, but by the 1990s most Catalans had abandoned that struggle. Their National Theatre is unlikely to shape the cultural nationalism of a future nation-state. National Theatres within Spain and Finland are hardly alone in this regard. As minority cultural and language groups pushed for recognition and cultural legitimacy within several European countries after 1970, it became politically expedient for many governments to recognize minority peoples living within their borders by granting them their own ‘national’ theatres. Sometimes, these minorities were close to 50 per cent of the nation-state’s population. Belgium, split between French and Flemish speakers, was one of the first European countries to recognize the need for two language-based

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theatres. Two separate ‘national’ companies were established when the Belgium National Theatre was founded in 1945, each playing for its own segment of the population. French cultural policy now recognizes and supports ‘Regional National Theatres’ (rightly termed oxymoronic by David Whitton) to accommodate the national theatrical ambitions of several minority groups. This de facto separation of National Theatres from the nationalistic agendas of nation-states continues today in Scotland in the United Kingdom. An Executive Committee for the National Theatre of Scotland announced in 2004 its desire ‘to develop a quality repertoire originating in Scotland and relevant to Scotland’, as well as a company that could bring to bear ‘a particular Scottish sensibility[…]on theatrical works from other countries and cultures’.4 Few politicians in the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium would risk denying cultural uniqueness to these and similar nationalists. At the same time, few French or Belgian citizens desire to secede from their countries; the political desires of the Scots for their own nation-state remain uncertain. Many ‘national’ theatres now float free from the nation-states that harbour them.

Changing nationalisms and changing media How might the historian begin to explain the major changes that have occurred in prototypical European National Theatres over the last twohundred-and-fifty years? Certainly political ideology has played a significant role. As S.E. Wilmer notes, the ideas of J.G. Herder shaped much of the conservative nationalism of the nineteenth century. And the apparent initial success of Communism in the Russian Revolution pushed nationalistic discourse to the left in the middle decades of the twentieth. Just as Herderian nationalism inspired many Central and Eastern Europeans to build National Theatres in the late nineteenth century, so too did the democratic socialism of the postwar era re-orient the National Theatres of Scandinavia toward the masses. Further, as Janelle Reinelt, Dragan Klaic, and others have noted, the rise of new ideologies undercutting the nationalism of European nation-states – globalism, multiculturalism, and ‘Europeanism’, among them – has played a role in the gradual decline of the second prototypical model of the National Theatre since the 1970s. To underline shifting political ideologies as the major cause of these massive changes, however, overlooks the media in which these ideas of nationhood were communicated and the reality effects that powerful new media bring with them. That is, widely influential media not only shape how reality is communicated, but also foreground certain aspects of reality occluded by earlier media. With the advent of photography in the nineteenth century, for example, the material and visual aspects of the real world began to assume greater importance. Photography, in turn, helped to make the materialist ideas of Darwin and Marx more visible and acceptable.5

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New ideas and ideologies reshape perceptions of the world not only because people can see the relevance of these ideas to changed realities, but because the reality effects of new media refocus people’s attention and call forth new ideologies to explain these perceptions. As Marshall McLuhan noted many years ago, popular media help to alter perception and imagination.6 Imagination is central to nationhood because a nation is always an ‘imagined community’. Benedict Anderson’s understanding of nationhood, which rests upon the link between media and national imagining, has enjoyed wide acceptance. According to Anderson, nations depend upon the bonding of strangers, who must imagine national ties that can transcend the face-to-face affiliations of family, neighbourhood, and locale. A nation, he says, is ‘an imagined political community – and imagined as both limited and sovereign’.7 In Imagined Communities, Anderson demonstrates that print culture was one of the major causes behind the political success and gradual proliferation of European nation-states after 1700. Anderson builds on McLuhan’s insights to link media, imagination, and nation-building. If some media can help to solidify nations, however, others must have the potential to destabilize them – and consequently to undermine the National Theatres that helped to legitimate their existence. In the final pages of this chapter I will sketch what a historian might do with the media–imagination– nation link to narrate the rise and fall of National Theatres in Europe. While I suspect that the scenario I will outline has some validity, its substantiation must await more research and more attention to other possible causal factors. Anderson has already linked European nationalism to the spread of print culture. In brief, the success of print induced the literate classes of each language group to imagine the existence of others like themselves engaged in reading the newspapers, journals, and books published in their shared language. By standardizing national languages, print empowered national bureaucrats and lawyers to enforce the rules and laws of nation-states in the face of local opposition. Print emboldened novelists and historians to claim the nation as their people’s natural home. As Napoleon demonstrated from 1800 to 1815, armies united by language and nationalism gained efficiencies and esprit that could challenge the professional fighting forces of established empires. Before the French Revolution, print culture had been shaping European theatre for two hundred years. As Julie Stone Peters has shown, print helped to legitimate text-based theatre as an independent institution, elevated the status of dramatic authorship, influenced the development of perspective scenery, shaped audience expectations, and even altered acting conventions and styles.8 In the eighteenth century, print underwrote and legitimated a bourgeois ‘public sphere’ in Europe. As literate Europeans living in capital cities traded ideas in print and discussed what they had read, they developed a sense of themselves as a public, with interests distinct from the governments that ruled them. The theatre played an active role in this public

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sphere, providing a forum for the ideas of Richard Steele in London and Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais in Paris, for example. The Hamburg National Theatre emerged within this context of enlightened, nationalistic bourgeois readers, critics, and theatre managers. Prototypical bourgeois nationalists in the capital cities of Central and Eastern Europe, steeped in books and articles that embraced Herderian romanticism, continued to realize their own imagined communities in stage productions at later National Theatres in the nineteenth century. If the readerly imagination of bourgeois nationalists underwrote the first historical stage of National Theatres, it is likely that national citizens influenced by the reality effects of more modern media influenced the second. After 1920, mass media led German and French citizens to imagine ‘the German people’ or ‘the French nation’ from pictures of real crowds in a newspaper, surging masses on a popular film, or perhaps roaring background sounds of voices and applause on the radio. ‘The people’ of the nation had voices, faces, and bodies that could be seen and heard every day; they were no longer a vague abstraction on the printed page that existed beyond one’s immediate town and region. There is a great deal of suggestive evidence that the new media played a substantial role in causing the emergence of the modern theatre. Nineteenth-century photography pushed European theatre toward realism, the popularity of film led audiences to expect different kinds of plays and streamlined modes of scene changing, and radio, because it evoked unseen forces that seemed to control the destinies of individuals and nations, probably helped to ratify the determinisms of Freudian psychology and/or Marxian history in the minds of many playwrights, actors, and audiences.9 The second phase of European National Theatre emerged in this mass media context. Actor-characters standing in for the nation as a whole might continue to be bourgeois types, but it was likely to be less their class orientation than the fact that they could represent the mass of average city dwellers that accounted for their popularity. Regarding audience synecdoche, the new national imagining meant that National Theatres had to demonstrate that they were attempting to reach all of the people in the nation-state, not just those who could attend a national playhouse in the capital. The democratic socialism that predominated in Scandinavia and much of Western Europe from the 1950s through the 1970s certainly legitimated the political mandate to extend the benefits of national theatre to all of the people. But behind the ideology of democratic socialism was an altered perception of the nation-state that seems to have rested partly on the reality effects of the mass media. After 1980, the changing media environment of Europe continued to alter national imagining and the role of National Theatres in people’s lives. Since then, the dominant media have moved in two directions: globalization and niche marketing.10 Global, principally American, media products flooded European markets, undercutting national radio, television, and film

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media in European countries and re-orientating mass media European products toward formats and expectations that were beyond national consensus. With the advent of videotapes, cable television, more radio stations, and eventually computers and i-Pods, niche marketing gradually supplanted mass approaches to audiences in several media markets. As some advertisers, film makers, and TV programme-makers pitched their products toward well-defined segments of the population, these segments began to believe that they had needs and expectations that were unique to their group. Both globalization and niche marketing fragment the common bonds of a nationstate, but it is probable that niche marketing has had a more deleterious effect as well – it has led minority groups to conflate their consumerist desires with their historical cultures. These circumstances can lead people to understand their ‘imagined community’ as a minority nation within a larger nation-state that is increasingly irrelevant to their perceived needs. One result of this trend seems to be an interest in ‘national’ theatres that have no ties to the nationalism of a nation-state. The Executive Committee eager to establish a National Theatre of Scotland, for example, puts its faith in ‘a particular Scottish sensibility’, a sensibility, apparently, that need have no relationship to any lingering nationalism for the United Kingdom as a whole. The Scottish example may have relevance for other National Theatre projects in the present and future. As Dragan Klaic notes in this anthology, such National Theatres are divorced from the emancipation projects of the first wave of National Theatres in the nineteenth century and much more steeped in consumerism than the National Theatres of the postwar era. According to Klaic, European nation-states have been ‘fragmented into disgruntled citizens of diverse persuasions’, a development, I would argue, that partly relates to the success of niche marketing across Europe. It does not follow, however, that ‘it is difficult to imagine how any National Theatre can try to represent the spirit of the nation, construct and enhance national identity, and stress the distinctions of national character’, as Klaic alleges. On the contrary, one can ‘imagine’ the national-theatre Scots, to return to that example, selling the spirit, identity, and character of their nation to theatre-going tourists in much the same way that other merchandizers niche-market bagpipes, tartans, and whisky. This is not to accuse them of insincerity, simply to note that National Theatre ambitions today cannot be disentangled from global and niche marketing. Nationhood has always depended on ‘imagination’, not authenticity, and communication media remain eager to fill our minds.

Notes 1. Phillip B. Zarrilli, Bruce McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei (2006), pp. 149–405. 2. See George Lakoff (1987), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press) and

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3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

Towards a History of National Theatres in Europe Eleanor Rosch and B.B. Lloyd (eds.) (1978), Cognition and Categorization (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). In addition to the essays in this anthology, see Erika Fischer-Lichte (2005), for more information about mass spectacles between the wars. The Executive Committee’s report is available on the Scottish Arts Council website: www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/information/publications/10000320.aspx, 4. See, for example, J. Green-Lewis (1996), Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press); F. Kittler, (1999), Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter, trans. G. Winthrop-Young and M. Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press); Tobin Nellhaus (2000), pp. 3–40; and Walter J. Ong (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen). According to Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (1967): ‘Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which they communicate than by the content of communication’, (p. 8). Benedict Anderson (1991 edition), p. 6. See Julie Stone Peters (2000). S.R. Fischer (2003), A History of Reading (London: Reaktion Books) and Ong, op. cit., are also useful. See Phillip B. Zarrilli et al. (2006), pp. 279–405. See N. Garcia Canclini (2001); D. Crane, N. Kawashima, and K. Kawasaki (2002); John Dimmick (2003), Media Competition and Coexistence: The Theory of the Niche (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates); and J. Lull (1995).

Part B Formation, Function, Language Issues and Ideological Control

I

Origins

5 A Window to the West: Russian Imperial Theatres Julia Listengarten

The development of the national theatre in Russia is closely linked to the dichotomy between the construction of the imperial identity beginning with the reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century and the search for the Russian national character that became especially prominent after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. As Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis suggest in their study of National Identity in Russian Culture, the tension between the definitions of the empire and the nation-state never got resolved in Russia, resulting in a problematic approach to the notion of Russianness or Russian nationalism. This tension lies in the inherent differences between the imperial and national identities, ‘or more precisely, between geo-political and ethno-cultural criteria of self-definition’.1 It has been argued that the Western European principles of ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationhood’ do not apply to the Russian empire since its ‘geo-political’ and ‘ethno-cultural’ boundaries do not coincide. The construction of a multi-ethnic empire with its ever-expanding territories and political influences necessitated the creation of a ‘Great Russian identity’ – or rather, an imperial identity – almost as an ideological imperative.2 This identity, however, was not based upon the existing culture of the old Rus’ with its centre in Moscow (or Muscovy) and its roots in Byzantine Orthodoxy. It was being constructed under Western cultural influences that brought neoclassical forms as well as the ideals of the enlightened monarchy into Imperial Russia. Complex ideological and cultural processes in post-Petrine Russia prompted and continued to cultivate the discord between the imperial and the national in Russian theatre. This discord first appeared as a contradiction between the court entertainment and public theatre, which was recognized by Peter the Great as he began to construct an image of Russia as a Western-looking empire with its capital in the newly, Western-style-built St. Petersburg – designed to be both ‘a window to the West’ and an ideological statement in opposition to the old Muscovite authority. Interested in promoting his Westernized political reforms, Peter the Great questioned 63

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the nature of theatre as a personal court entertainment – the theatrical form that emerged under his father Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich. Peter’s intention to popularize theatre fell short, however, since the majority of court actors were foreigners (mostly Germans) who did not speak the Russian language and therefore could not bridge the linguistic and cultural barriers with their audiences. The foundation of the first Russian Public Theatre dates back to 1756 under the reign of Elizabeth who understood the need for establishing a Russian theatre that would not only endorse Westernized political ideology but also create an image of imperial glory. A group of professional Russian actors from Yaroslavl’ under the leadership of Fyodor Volkov was invited to St. Petersburg and granted permission to perform ‘tragedies and comedies’ at the Golovin stone house, on the Vasilyevsky Island.3 Three years later, in 1759, this theatre company, initially declared to be a state institution, became, in Laurence Senelick’s succinct expression, ‘subsumed into the Imperial household’.4 The theatre company was placed under the authority of the Court – an action which evidently benefited the company financially even as the theatre itself reverted back to its position of a court entertainment intended solely for the nobility. This time, however, the court company was given a new purpose: to play an active role in the ambitious imperial drama conceived by Peter and continued by his daughter Elizabeth and, most significantly, by Catherine the Great. The Administration of the Imperial Theatres was instituted shortly thereafter, which led to the gradual establishment of the imperial theatre monopoly that lasted until 1882. In upholding the cultural policies of Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth, Catherine the Great became a staunch believer in strengthening an ideological purpose for Russian imperial theatre. The coronation of the Empress in Moscow in 1762 turned into a magnificent theatrical event, part of which was organized by Fyodor Volkov, then director of St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre. The grandiose masquerade called Minerva Triumphant, directed by Volkov himself, in which a procession of chariots with ‘enormous giants’ and ‘extraordinary dwarfs’,5 among other costumed personages, became a glorious imperial spectacle demonstrating the triumph of the Russian crown. The parallel between Imperial Russia and the Roman Empire, created through this impressively decorated and masterfully staged pageant, was specifically enjoyed by Catherine the Great who, as described by Hubertus F. Jahn, often ‘appeared on allegorical pictures and coins as an ancient goddess, whose empire resembled the Roman Empire both in its ethnic diversity and in its geographical dimensions’.6 While the image of the Roman Empire attracted Peter the Great, who actually adopted the Latin title of emperor,7 and subsequent Russian rulers (particularly Catherine), the Western neoclassical ideal of an enlightened aristocracy began to permeate Russian social thought of the time. The main function of Russian imperial theatre in the second part of the eighteenth

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century was therefore to enforce the Western model of the Enlightenment, and, as a result, most Russian neoclassical plays of the mid-to-late eighteenth century became merely the imitations of Western classics. In fact, the influence of Racine, Voltaire, and Lessing on eighteenth-century Russian playwrights such as Alexander Sumarokov and Yakov Knyazhnin was enormous.8 Commenting on the absence of national characteristics in drama, actor and dramatist Petr Plavilshikov wrote: ‘Of what use is it to a Russian that a certain Tartar Genghis Khan conquered China, and accomplished much good there? …. First, we have to learn about the things that have occurred in our native land.’9 The necessity to create Russian characters on stage was supported by the crown as long as the characters’ actions did not question the ideological principles of the empire. For instance, Knyazhnin’s neoclassical tragedy Vadim, with a Novgorod Slav as a central character, became immediately censored since its ‘expressions’ were viewed by the Senate as ‘injurious to the lawful autocratic rule, and therefore intolerable within the boundaries of the Russian Empire.’10 The rise of national patriotism after 1812, the increased interest in national identity after the 1825 Decembrist revolt, which was reflected in Russian criticism, particularly in the articles of Alexander Pushkin and Vissarion Belinsky, as well as the emergence of Slavophilism, prompted the inclusion of a nationalistic discourse into an official ideology. In 1833 Sergei Uvarov, Education Minister under Emperor Nicholas I, advanced a new ideological programme uniting Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. In Uvarov’s triad, the rediscovered focus on the ‘national’ character as well as the emphasis on Russian Orthodox roots served to reinforce the autocratic principles of the empire in which the two notions of Russian identity – the imperial (multinational) and the ethno-cultural – continued to co-exist. The term ‘nationality’ however was hardly meant to encompass all national characteristics of the ethically diverse population of the Russian empire. In fact, as Jahn seems to suggest, it rather applied to ‘an ethnic Russian national consciousness and thus lay the groundwork for Russian hegemony in the empire … ’.11 The term ‘national’ thus received an imperial ideological connotation, complicating the process of constructing national identity, or multiple national identities, in the Russian empire and revealing once again the contradictions between its ‘geo-political’ and ‘ethno-cultural’ boundaries. This tension between the imperial and the national pervades the entire development of Russian theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and finds its most compelling realization in the dynamic relationship between the two prominent nineteenth-century theatre companies: the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and the Maly Theatre in Moscow. Indeed, in the mid nineteenth century the Alexandrinsky Theatre arguably became an embodiment of Russian imperial culture while the Maly Theatre in Moscow gradually grew to represent the Russian national character.

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Origins and locales The history of the Alexandrinsky Theatre officially starts in 1832 with a production of Kryukovsky’s patriotic tragedy Pozharsky mounted on the stage of a newly erected building designed by Italian architect Carlo Rossi. Kryukovsky’s tragedy, which was one of the best known plays of the early nineteenth century Russian patriotic repertoire, exemplifies the enormous strength and courage of the Russian people who succeeded in expelling Polish aggressors from their land. The subject of the tragedy could not better fit the nationalistic spirit of the time which was about to receive an imperial ideological spin – a year later Uvarov introduced his version of official nationalism through the triad of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. The patriotic content of Kryukovsky’s tragedy perfectly suited the imperial nature of this newly built theatre whose direct ties with the Russian court were enforced by the name itself – the name Alexandrinsky was given in honour of Alexandra, the wife of Nicholas I. The monumental structure of the Alexandrinsky Theatre building was in complete harmony with its imperial function, raising a question about the crucial role of architectural styles in constructing national identity, as well as the significance of cultural expectations associated with specific locales. The building was a segment of Rossi’s architectural ensemble, facing Nevskii Prospect near the Anichkov Park. Rossi’s monumental architectural style continued the legacy of Peter the Great who was the first to introduce Western classical forms in the architecture of St. Petersburg, a new capital of Imperial Russia (Rossiia), built to replace Moscow, the old capital of Orthodox Rus’. For instance, the new capital’s main church – The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, which constituted a section of the Peter-Paul Fortress, designed by Domenico Trezzini – blatantly symbolized Peter’s move toward the West and away from the East. The elongated structure of the Cathedral with its high tower and soaring spire, overpowering a modest baroque dome, took the place of the old traditional Russian church known for its cuboid shape, fivedomed roof, and onion domes.12 Rossi’s ensemble, with the Alexandrinsky Theatre in its centre, is a representative example of the neoclassical architectural unity in nineteenth-century Imperial Russia. The theatre faces a square formed by the Anichkov Park and the Public Library, leading to another symmetrical square. The concern for the monumental is evident in the exterior of the building. ‘A loggia of Corinthian columns’ marks the front of the theatre, ‘culminating in a sculpture of Apollo in a quadriga’.13 The side facades of the building are equally imposing: the porticos of eight Corinthian columns on each side complete the image of imperial glory. The interior of the theatre was designed with the same impressive image in mind. In fact, the theatre, arranged in five tiers, had a capacity of approximately 1,400 seats, and the stage, upon the completion of its construction, was one of the largest stages amongst European theatres.14 The Alexandrinsky Theatre was thus conceived

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to epitomize the fusion of Russian autocratic and nationalistic ideals – soon to be reinforced through the official imperial ideology. Even though there were a few attempts to establish public theatres in St. Petersburg in the eighteenth century, most theatrical developments leading to the establishment of the Alexandrinsky Theatre in 1832 were directly controlled by the Administration of the Imperial Theatres. The Free Russian Theatre, for instance, which was founded in 1779 for the middle and lower classes on Tsarina’s Meadow and whose company consisted of orphans and children of the poor – inmates of the Foundlings’ Hospital, four years later, in 1783, fell under the imperial jurisdiction and was subsequently renamed the Maly Theatre.15 The name ‘Maly’ (‘small’ or ‘little’) was chosen apparently to differentiate the theatre from the Bolshoi (‘big’) Kamenny Theatre. The St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre became known mostly for its opera and ballet performances and was later replaced by the Mariinskii Theatre, built in 1860. (Glinka’s celebrated opera titled Ivan Susanin or, more patriotically, A Life for the Tsar, was first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1836.) Unlike the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, the Maly Theatre on Tsarina’s Meadow typically housed performances of dramatic plays.16 This theatre was demolished in 1797 at the request of Paul I who wished to use Tsarina’s Meadow exclusively for military parades; the function of the Maly Theatre was then passed down to various other imperial theatrical enterprises in St. Petersburg culminating in the foundation of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.17 The Maly Theatre in Moscow emerged from an entirely different tradition of theatre administration. Prior to 1805 there were only private theatres in Moscow, some of which had a practice of employing serf actors. When the decree stipulating the establishment of the Moscow Imperial Theatres was officially issued, theatres in Moscow still continued to enjoy a certain amount of independence that lasted until 1825, the year of the Decembrist revolt that led to the further tightening of imperial control by Nicholas I. The old Petrovsky Theatre, which was replaced by the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre in 1825, three months after the opening of the Maly Theatre, had, for instance, an advisory council that consisted of actors, dramatists, and influential theatre patrons. This council was responsible for the majority of repertory and casting decisions which reflected fairly democratic concerns of the Moscow theatre constituency. It is noteworthy that in 1886 when the imperial control over Moscow theatres had manifested itself in its entirety, the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, renowned for his significant contribution to the development of both national drama and theatre, was appointed Director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres. This appointment, however short (it was halted a year later by Ostrovsky’s death), was an indication of the relative autonomy of Moscow Imperial Theatres from the St. Petersburg bureaucratic circles.18 Upon its inception in 1824, the Maly Theatre played a rather subordinate role of a second, smaller stage, in comparison to the gloriously monumental

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structure of the Bolshoi Theatre. Indeed, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, designed in neoclassical style by the Russian architects Andrei Mikhailov and Osip Bove, had a semblance with the soon-to-be-erected Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The building of the Maly Theatre, on the other hand, which together with the Bolshoi formed a considerable part of the Theatre Square, was a reconstructed merchant house designed by the architects Elkinsky and Bove for the merchant Vargin who, having dreamed of owning his own theatre, had commissioned a residence with a grand concert hall. For more than a decade, productions of dramatic works took place on the stages of both the Maly and Bolshoi Theatres, depending on the scale and perhaps significance of each endeavour. The first Moscow production of Gogol’s The Inspector General, for example, was presented in 1836 on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. The 1837 production of Hamlet, with Pavel Mochalov playing the role of Hamlet, also took place at the Bolshoi and continued to be performed there for several years.19 Both theatres shared the same cast, and the official separation between the Maly as a dramatic theatre and the Bolshoi as a theatre of opera and ballet did not occur until the 1840s.

Repertoire, audiences, actors The divergent tendencies of the Maly Theatre in Moscow and the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, inherent in their nature and origin, further demonstrated themselves in the second part of the nineteenth century. The prevalence of the merchant class in Moscow reflected the audience’s taste for middle-class drama and a natural style of acting. The Maly Theatre, which was often referred to as the ‘second Moscow University’, ‘Ostrovsky’s house’ or ‘the house of the actor’, took upon itself the mission to educate its diverse audiences20 as well as to explore national peculiarities (byt’) of Russian life – an approach quite different from the previously imposed imperial nationalism or autocratic patriotism. The critic Belinsky, comparing favourably the democratic propensity in constituency and practice of the Maly Theatre to the grandeur of St. Petersburg audiences and repertoire, observed with a great deal of irony: The Alexandrinsky Theatre has its public with its own countenance, with its peculiar conceptions, requirements, and understanding of things. … . Plays which delight the bulk of the Alexandrinsky Theatre audiences are divided into the poetic and the comic. The former are either translations of monstrous German dramas composed of sentimentalities, trivial effects, and false situations, or homespun compositions in which inflated phraseology and soulless exclamations degrade time-honored historical names. Comic pieces are invariably either translations of, or adaptations from, French vaudevilles.21

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Even when both theatres shared a similar repertoire due to the centralized theatre administration and censorship, differing interpretations of the same play often manifested the theatres’ artistic as well as ideological differences. The first production of The Inspector General on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre in 1836 dismayed its author; the actor Nikolai Dyur’s reading of Khlestakov, in particular, displeased Gogol who compared Dyur’s Khlestakov to a buffoon, ‘a banal liar’ ‘imported from Paris to parade here’.22 On the other hand, the Maly Theatre’s production of The Inspector General, staged in the same year, came much closer in spirit to Gogol’s satirical comedy. The character of the mayor in this production was portrayed by the former actorserf Mikhail Schepkin, recognized as a founder of the so-called ‘natural school of acting’ in Russia as well as an ardent advocate of an ensemble performance. The opposing acting styles of Moscow and St. Petersburg dramatic theatres are perhaps best epitomized in a much-described artistic, if not ideological, antagonism between the passionate but at times uneven performances of Pavel Mochalov on the stage of the Maly Theatre and the lofty and wellbalanced acting of Vasilii Karatygin, geared toward the heightened manners and neoclassical modes of Westernized aristocratic St. Petersburg.23 The ideological remoteness of the Alexandrinsky Theatre from the country’s national and political developments gloriously manifested itself in Vsevolod Meyerhold’s production of Lermontov’s Masquerade staged in February 1917 on the brink of the Bolshevik Revolution. While ‘an image of palatial, majestic and monumental Russia’24 was being reinforced on the stage of the imperial theatre, the powerful national drama was happening on the streets, outside the Alexandrinsky Theatre, in the form of the brewing revolutionary storm that would bring the era of imperial Russia to a tragic end.

The staging of identity in post-Soviet culture The earlier divisions of cultural identity in Russia began to resurface after the demise of the Soviet empire. The country’s radical ideological shifts, a series of economic crises, political instability, and regional wars have prompted multiple concerns about the necessity of ‘revalidating’ Russian national identity, further complicated by the process of globalization and expansion of Western capital and power in contemporary Russia. In the early post-Soviet years, the rapid and uncontrolled invasion of free enterprise transformed Russian culture into a commodity of the global market. Theatre was no exception; the process of cultural commodification was supported in part by a rise in Russian independent producers, agencies, and directors, who mostly relied on foreign sponsors to attract and entertain the new and fast growing class of Russian capitalists. Established theatre companies that had been nationalized under the Soviet government and for a long time held the status of National Theatres were no longer able to provide any alternative theatre structure and/or

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direction. It was, however, not only the faltering financial, organizational, and aesthetic principles of these theatres that were ultimately called into question. It was the actual concept of National Theatres that had to be substantially re-evaluated; introduced by the Soviet government in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution in an effort to nationalize art and create a new proletarian culture, this concept, in the following years, was increasingly used as an ideological tool to exercise absolute state control over theatre companies and impose merciless censorship on theatrical culture – a striking similarity with the imperial theatre institution. As the status of National Theatres lost its previous relevance and as most theatre companies struggled with their financial status and socio-political purpose after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a great number of Russian directors fled en masse Russia’s political and cultural chaos to work abroad at the same time as acclaimed Western theatre practitioners flocked to Russia for extended artistic engagements. While signifying Russia’s entrance into the global market and marking a first major step in re-establishing cultural dialogue between post-Soviet Russia and the rest of the world, these developments in the early 1990s unveiled the country’s deepening national cultural crisis. In their longing to find place and identity in a changing global landscape, Russian contemporary artists began to look inwards into Russia’s roots and traditions, thus engaging themselves once again in the discourse about the authenticity (or lack thereof) of the Russian sensibility, a debate that in the nineteenth century erupted between Westernizers and Slavophiles. The notion of ‘nostalgic idealization of tsarist Russia and its culture’, often in opposition to the ‘shallow, ignorant, and corrupt’ West, in Yana Hashamova’s expression,25 pervaded the post-Soviet cultural discourse. Post-Soviet Russian theatre likewise engaged in the discussion about national identity and cultural authority. In the aftermath of the collapsed Soviet culture, theatre companies demonstrated a renewed interest in Russian classics such as Chekhov, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky but the most revered and staged playwright became Ostrovsky, a ‘father’ of Russian national drama. Similarly, the current Russian government under Putin’s administration has recently manifested its eagerness to participate in identity (re)construction in order to restore the long forgotten image of Russia’s imperial glory. The spectacular celebrations of St. Petersburg’s tercentenary in 2003, as well as the reconstruction of Anna’s Palace of Ice in the winter of 2006, became national theatrical events in which the resurrected imperial sensibility functioned, even if momentarily, as a metaphor for Russia’s longings to restore the imperial glory.26 However, Putin’s resurrection of Russia’s imperial image – through performing nostalgia and glorifying the imperial past – cannot resist Russia’s propensity for debating the complex issue of what constitutes the ‘national’. Moreover, in the country’s conflicting contemporary climate one can no longer safely rely on the binary oppositions of East versus West that prevailed in the cultural discourse of tsarist Russia and

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which began to re-emerge in the immediate post-Soviet period. The instability of traditional boundaries both in global politics and cultural contexts, which manifested itself though shifting and/ or redefining the East-West dichotomy, mixing identities, and redrawing borders, in Russia in particular, has further complicated the process of confirming and/or contesting one’s cultural uniqueness in the multi-layered contemporary landscape. The Alexandrinsky (also known as the Pushkin Academic Drama Theatre) and Maly Theatres, in the early twenty-first century, find themselves, perhaps to a varying degree, in a process of recognizing this necessity to embrace the complexities of Russia’s relationship with Western and Eastern cultures and to challenge any ‘one-sided comprehension of Russian national identity versus the global world’.27 An artistic programme ‘From Traditionalism to a New Theatre’, which was initiated in 2002 by the Ministry of Culture with an aim of avoiding the Russian proclivity to create a meta-narrative about its national past, is a rather ambitious project set out to link the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg with the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow under the artistic direction of Valery Fokin. This synthesis between the centuries-old imperial theatre and Russian avant-garde experimentation reveals a crucial necessity, explicit in the country’s cultural rhetoric, for a new spark, new energy, new aesthetic, and a new direction in the process of rebuilding national identity. While the Maly Theatre still holds the name of Ostrovsky’s house and remains a stronghold of classical Russian drama, it, nevertheless, joins the Alexandrinsky Theatre in its attempts to strengthen the dialogue between tradition and experimentation as well as Russian and Western theatrical cultures. During the Autumn 2006 festivities commemorating the 250th anniversary of the first imperial Russian theatre, the productions of former rivals – Maly and Alexandrinsky Theatres – shared the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre with the shows brought to St. Petersburg by Polish, Finnish, Italian, and French theatre companies. As the residual traces of the national versus Western polarity continue to exist in Russian culture today, one could argue that by exploring new forms and interweaving differing artistic traditions contemporary Russian theatre in the twenty-first century seeks to complicate the country’s cultural trope that for centuries has stressed the dichotomy between Western influences and Russian national identity.

Notes 1. Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis (2004), p. 5. 2. Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis op.cit., p. 4. 3. B.V. Varneke (1971), pp. 71–2, quotes the full text of this act which was publicized on August 30, 1756. 4. Laurence Senelick (1991), p. 317. 5. B.V. Varneke op.cit., p. 74. 6. Hubertus Jahn, ‘ “Us”: Russians on Russianness,’ in Franklin and Widdis (2004), p. 55.

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7. Ibid. 8. E.G. Kholodov (ed.) (1977–87) Istoriia russkogo dramaticheskogo teatra (Moscow: Iskusstvo). 9. Quoted in Varneke op.cit., p. 139. 10. Quoted in ibid, p. 127. 11. Jahn, op.cit., p. 61. 12. William Craft Brumfield (1993), A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University press), p. 210. 13. Ibid, pp. 364–5. 14. Ibid. 15. In his chapter, ‘The Emergence of The Russian Theatre, 1763–1800, in Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky (eds.)’ (1999), Victor Borovsky discusses the history of the Free Russian Theatre (p. 60). 16. Fonvisin’s satirical comedy The Minor premiered on its stage in 1882. 17. See Borovsky, op.cit. See also Kholodov, op.cit. 18. The extent of this relative autonomy vacillated greatly in the nineteenth century due to different imperial policies. Besides its apparent benefits, the distance from the St. Petersburg Administration of Imperial Theatres had certain disadvantages for the Moscow stages. For instance, in 1861 the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow was leased to an Italian theatre company which performed there several times a week. Moreover, the operating budget of the Moscow theatres was significantly less than that of their St. Petersburg counterparts. 19. Boris Alpers (1979), Teatr Mochalova i Schepkina.( Moscow: Iskusstvo), p. 315. 20. The educational function of the Moscow Maly Theatre is discussed in Alpers, op.cit. 21. Quoted in B.V. Varneke op.cit., pp. 294–5. See also V.G. Belinsky (1983) O drame i teatre (Moscow: Iskusstvo). 22. Jan Kott (1984), The Theatre of Essence and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), p. 16. 23. See Alpers op.cit. 24. Konstantin Rudnitsky (1981), Meyerhold the Director (Ann Arbor: Ardis), p. 235. 25. In her article (2006), ’Two Visions of a Usable Past in (Op)position to the West: Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia and Sokurov’s Russian Ark’, Yana Hashamova interrogates two differing visions of Russia’s imperial past presented in these two recent Russian films. 26. The original Palace of Ice was built in 1740 during the reign of Anna Ioannovna, the niece of Peter the Great. Designed by the Italian-trained Russian architect Petr Egopkin, the palace was erected on the frozen river Neva for the wedding festivities of one of Anna’s servants; although it melted that same Spring, it remained in Russia’s cultural memory as a major signifier of imperial capriciousness and love for grandiose entertainment. 27. See Hashamova, op.cit., p. 265.

6 The Abbey Opens: A First Night Revisited Ben Levitas

On 27 December 1904 the doors of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, opened to the public for the first time. It was an event long anticipated, and as expected, yielded a full house for the inaugural night of what was to become the home of the Irish National Theatre Society. People approaching the building would have paused, perhaps to admire the two stained-glass panels lit from within, designed by Sara Purser, of Celtic nut trees, symbolizing knowledge. Then, passing through the double glass doors at the Marlborough Street side of the building, the prospective audience cramped into the lobby to admire for the first time its interior. On the walls of the compact vestibule, looking back as if in mutual admiration, hung portraits freshly painted by John Butler Yeats, the poet’s father, of Lady Gregory, Frank and William Fay, Maire Nic Shuiblaigh, and the woman whose money made it all possible, Annie Horniman. From there, they would drift in to find their seats in the stalls or upstairs in the gallery. It was a well-proportioned theatre, with a modest capacity of 562, and its small stage, framed in the proscenium arch, was kept in close proximity to the spectators by the intimacy of its necessarily compact use of space. There was no room for an orchestra pit. Around the walls, as one journalist described it, were ‘large medallions exhibiting the city arms, the Irish harp, and other devices appropriate to the national character’.1 Patrons could be comfortable in the knowledge that with one exception (the iron and carved wood electroliers from Nuremberg) all the fixtures and fittings were products of Irish industry. As the audience settled into the brand new scarlet leather upholstery amidst much polished brass work and pre-curtain chatter, the plaintive fiddle of Arthur Daley – performing a selection of traditional Irish airs – played across an expectant atmosphere. Finally the lights dimmed and the curtain rose for the first time, on W. B. Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand. There is good reason to open a discussion of the inception of the Abbey Theatre so descriptively. At present the history of the Irish National Theatre Society is stamped by the process of centenary celebration; its early career marked out by retrospectives tracing its impact from its predecessor, the Irish Literary Theatre 1899–1901, to the opening of the Abbey in 1904, the Playboy 73

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riots of 1907, and its place in debating cultural nationalist issues up to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921. But there are evident dangers in presenting any theatre history in this manner. The Irish National Theatre has been thoroughly interrogated with regard to its ambitions to hammer its audience into unity; and in a variety of studies the singularity of its presumption given the diversity of theatres available within the nation has been amply exposed.2 But the broader point should be made that development of a National Theatre has from the start conceptually hitched a ride on a particularly compelling historical narrative, that persuasive teleology of a people becoming a nation becoming a state. With the potency of the retrospective there is always the danger of interpreting the theatre’s role not in terms of the uncertainties, the anticipations and the expectations of the authors, actors and audience, but in the light of subsequent events. Rather than engaging with the politics of performance, we impose upon it the weight of a history, which being convinced of its destination, declines the potential alternatives immanent in the past and in the present. As Christopher Morash has shown, the theatre movement has to be offset with the theatre moment: first centuries with first nights.3 Otherwise, the skewing of the dialectic away from contingency toward zeitgeist can stifle the pluralities of the event itself.4 We can, of course, never entirely escape the teleology imposed by viewing the past from a distance, but we can question narrative contiguities by occasionally studying performance through the right end of the telescope: inspecting the details of inception rather than a moment miniaturized by one hundred years of subsequent events. It is important, then, to maintain the balance between the intimate and the overview. To lose the synchronic detail of the event is to misconstrue the trend in its diachronic process, not least because it refuses some necessary coordinates. Not just the external social and political frames and their complex interaction in the social space of the auditorium, but their interaction with the internal worlds of individual literary–dramatic pieces, made flesh in the circumstances of reception. As a kind of complementary redress, then, of recent centenary histories of the Irish National Theatre, this chapter will concentrate on the dynamics of the opening night of the Abbey. In so doing, an immediate anomaly at the heart of the problematic relationship of the National Theatre to the National movement is immediately apparent. W. B. Yeats had trailed the development of the Abbey Theatre with a series of controversies emphasizing that the imperatives of the (already existing) Irish National Theatre Society would be aesthetic, rather than political in nature. In the INTS journal Samhain he had declared the fundamental principle of the project to be ‘no propaganda but that of good art.’5 Yeats’s insistence was upon a drama that would dwell within an autonomous artistic realm, free of the confinements of the material world, with the pressures, distortions, and limitations it brought to the poets’ imaginative powers.

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The theatre that housed it suggested a rather more pragmatic reality. While individual vision might have to resist the imperatives of commerce and/or nationalism, that friction seemed manifest in the very fabric of the building: a mixture of the modish and the stolid, of vogueish Celticism and old-style nationalist iconography, of spatial pragmatics and bourgeois comfort. Nevertheless, the potency of the Abbey as a National Theatre lay less in the identification of the theatre with the nation as with its distancing and disruption of that identification. In so doing, I would argue, the theatre made space for a perception of the Irish nation that was seldom confined by narrow nationalist representations. This dynamic was primarily the product of the intersection of contrasting priorities that were involved with the theatre’s founding. The first set of priorities was provided by cultural nationalism, a movement of which the Irish National Theatre Society, founded in 1902 out of radical nationalist organizations, was one crystallization. For many such nationalists, the theatre had always as its primary function the exposure, and overriding the significance of, the fact of British imperial power. The National Theatre had a simple task – to draw upon a distinctively Irish sense of cultural difference, and to dramatize the need for resistance. The second driving impetus was a proto-modernist emphasis on an aggressive aesthetic hostile to social norms, which associated popular morality with an exhausted and corrupt bourgeois ethos. This was a theatre that prioritized artistic aims on the basis that such criteria were the best safeguard against commercial imperatives, and would ultimately prove a more potent cultural force in Ireland’s cause than any strict party discipline. The emphasis here, too, was on the untrammelled creative expression of whatever genius Ireland might possess. Not unreasonably, perhaps, Yeats was very keen on that particular point, although ironically it was someone else, J. M. Synge, who came to embody this capacity to rub middle-class nationalist sentiment up the wrong way. A conflict emerged therefore between a nationalist movement intent on harnessing the power of theatre, and a theatre movement intent on contesting the priorities of the nation. It was a conflict that would split the Irish National Theatre Society twice in the first four years of its existence. But it was also a conflict that was exacerbated by the relationship of the company to its house, of the INTS to the Abbey Theatre. As Adrian Frazier has influentially shown, the provision of the Abbey Theatre for the use of the National Theatre Society under the direction of Yeats also introduced a complex cultural class politics in which the intrusion of British capital facilitated the establishment of an exclusively Protestant Anglo-Irish directorate of Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory. The title of ‘National’ theatre became increasingly contested as the ‘nationalist’ elements within the company were winnowed out through schism, and the opposition to the direction of the theatre provided less from within the ranks as from without, from an audience alert to apparent depoliticization at work.6

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On the opening night such divisions were evident: both in terms of the three plays performed (and those not), and the order of their presentation: On Baile’s Strand, Cathleen ni Houlihan, and Spreading the News. The first play to be performed, On Baile’s Strand, was also a product of Yeats’s concerted effort to break with what had been an intimate connection with the radical nationalist clubs who had driven the cultural revival thus far. Here, Yeats creatively and reflexively refracted the issues at stake through dramatised Celtic mythology. Yeats’s interpretation of the legendary warrior Cuchulain’s unwitting slaughter of his own son, at the behest of the High King Conchubar, contained within it a process of rupture lived through over the previous two years. Frank Fay, taking the hero’s part (making up for his lack of stature with his celebrated command of elocution) performed the pledge in a ceremony of submission: I had thought you were of those that praised Whatever life could make the pulse run quickly, Even though it were brief, and that you held That a free gift was better than a forced. – But that’s all over. – I will keep it too; I never gave a gift and took it up again. If the wild horse should break the chariot pole, It should be punished. Should that be the oath? [Two of the women, still singing, crouch in front of him holding the bowl over their heads. He spreads his hands over the flame.] I swear to be obedient in all things To Conchubar, and to uphold his children.7 No sooner has the oath been sworn, than the unrecognized love-child of his fierce affair with the warrior queen Aoife enters to challenge him; and driven against his will, Cuchulain destroys him, only to find out the truth from a Tiresian blind beggar-man. Maddened by his loss, Cuchulain plunges into the sea, into the one fight he cannot win. The allegorical implications of Yeats’s play were rooted, like the drama itself, in a personalized political disjuncture. The previous year had seen a double break with Maud Gonne and with links binding Yeats to nationalist commitments; Maud Gonne’s marriage to Boer War veteran Major John MacBride had combined with Yeats’s reading of what he knew would be a controversial debut – Synge’s first play, In the Shadow of the Glen – and so it proved. The break, in effect had been mutual. Yeats’s saturation in the works of Nietzsche had already begun to convince him that the assertion, rather than the submission, of will would be the making of him. Reflecting this, the tragedy of OBS was wrought not out of the flaws in Cuchulain’s heroism but from the constraints of conventional authority placed upon it. Cuchulain’s allegiance to Conchubar eventually provides the

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High King with the mystical purchase that forces him to murder his own son in single combat. The play travels a Sophoclean path, through interrogation to tragic revelation; but the crisis in the play is forced not by unravelling fate but in the subjection of individual heroic will to political expediency. Set against the caste distinctions of nobles and beggarmen, this production displayed Yeats’s confidence in a new-found social status. Nietzschean resentment at Gonne’s departure and hostility to nationalist criticism of Synge, still conspired to make a tense and tangible piece of theatre. If OBS trailed the recent history of dissent to make an opening statement of independence, its symbolism also suggested a struggle within the ambit of nationalism rather than antagonism to it. Cuchulain was, after all, still the hound of Ulster, a subject fit for national dramatic treatment. In fact, audiences found Yeats’s new muscularity more persuasive than earlier more effete productions. The daily Nationalist newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, recommended it as ‘more virile and actual’ in its realization. Even Griffith, the radical nationalist editor of the United Irishman and a particularly avid critic of the INTS, was subdued rather than dismissive: ‘On Baile’s Strand has much more action than Mr Yeats’s previous plays. [However] It cannot be said that the people of the drama are at all adequate to the people of the legend; there is a lack of dignity and of strength in the play which a considerable amount of melodramatic acting did not serve to remove’.8 Arthur Griffith’s position was an important indicator of nationalist attitudes to the Abbey’s opening. Of all the cultural nationalist commentators who had emerged out of the 1890s, he was the figure who commanded the attention of the political clubs. In fact his role in organizing the Celtic Literary Society had provided the basis for a radical nationalist contingent that coalesced into Cumann na nGaedheal in 1900. He had also masterminded the National Council, formed in 1903, another attempt to draw together disparate separatist elements into conference. In the near future lay his key role in the founding of Sinn Fein in 1907. If ever there was a high king of cultural nationalist organizations, it was he. Griffith would have been expected to be hostile to the Abbey. He nursed a deep sense of betrayal at the direction that the INTS had taken since its inception two years before. Then, Griffith had marvelled at the opening productions of W. B. Yeats’s (and Lady Gregory’s) Cathleen ni Houlihan, and George Russell’s Deirdre, with words of glowing enthusiasm. The Irish National Theatre was, he had declared, ‘a theatre where the spirit of our country can speak straight to our souls, rouse every noble emotion, and rekindle the fires of patriotism’.9 But then Yeats and the Fays had combined to veto an anti-recruiting play (Colum’s Saxon Shillin’) and several members of the troupe left to set up their own company; and in the Autumn of 1903 the shocking theatrical capacities of John Millington Synge had emerged. In the Shadow of the Glen, with its grave comedic treatment of adulterous behaviour in the Wicklow glens, splintered the movement.

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Griffith launched a blistering attack: It remained [he said] for a member of the Society who spends most of his time away from Ireland, and under the operation of foreign influences, to represent, in good faith no doubt, adultery as a feature of Irish life, and to exhibit his utter ignorance of the Irish character by treating woman’s frailty as a subject for laughter.10 Yeats had been equally robust in his defence: ‘Extreme politics in Ireland were once the politics of intellectual freedom also’, he countered, ‘but now, under the influence of a violent contemporary paper . . . even extreme politics seems to be about to unite themselves to hatred of ideas.’11 Cannily, Yeats hit on an ironic truth in the early era of the Abbey. Resistance to an assumed nationalist consensus sometimes looked suspiciously like a unionist rearguard, but it also exposed the presumption of bourgeois nationalist ideologues to determine the virtues of national identity. In defying the right of Griffith to set the agenda, dramatists like Synge could open other processes of oppression besides the colonial – questions of gender and class particularly – to scrutiny. The argument that such side issues should wait until full independence did not have much purchase among Irish working-class or feminist organizations, with the result that the theatre often won surprising support from left-nationalist opinion. Such alliances recognized that if Yeats’s motives had been elitist in origin, they could be democratizing in effect. And as it turned out, one of the deepest ironies of the Abbey was that if it was intended to provide a platform for Yeats, it earned its infamy in making space for Synge. But the opening night also shows Yeats’s cunning. Confrontational as he was, he had no intention of showcasing Synge. In the Shadow of the Glen was not on the first night programme, although it was on the weekly bill of fare (where it was to alternate with Cathleen Ni Houlihan, showing two very different sides of the Abbey coin). All the productions present at the Abbey premiere were therefore to some extent performed ‘in the shadow’ of In the Shadow of the Glen. As a controversy fresh in the mind of the attending audience, and evidently likely to be revived imminently, Synge’s disrupting work was waiting in the wings. Its absence was a palpable suspense, but it was not to be allowed to distract from the astonishing existence of the theatre at all. Yeats’s caution was reciprocated. Arthur Griffith gave a more guarded review of the opening, balancing his inevitable instruction to pay more attention to nationalist imperatives with a grudging welcome: The new theatre was well filled on Tuesday, and we hope it will have good houses all the week . . . We congratulate [Mr Yeats] and his company on the opening of their theatre, but we feel convinced if it is to live, it must also ‘be moulded by the influences which are moulding National life at present.’12

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Here was an acknowledgment that the new building was an achievement which, whatever misgivings he might have about its future use, was worth recognition. There would be plenty of opportunity for criticism and contestation as and when it became necessary – as his closing caveat made clear. The suspension of hostilities had been at least partially prompted by the cleverly constructed sequence of plays. If On Baile’s Strand allegorized the dangers of submission to the will of a nationalist instruction, the next piece reminded the audience of the possibility of patriotic commitment. While On Baile’s Strand spoke of the distance travelled from the common cause of nationalist ambition, Cathleen ni Houlihan returned to the heady days of the INTS’s founding performances in the spring of 1902. This was the nationalist play par excellence, in which the old woman personifying Ireland is restored to youth, ‘with the walk of a queen’,13 by the sacrifice of young men to the cause. The central role was played to great effect by Maire Nic Shiubhliagh that evening. She delivered the invocation to martyrdom with grave power: They shall be remembered for ever, They shall be alive for ever, They shall be speaking for ever, The people shall hear them for ever.14 ‘It was a rendering of intense sympathy’ reported the Freeman’s Journal, ‘that made the cheers of the audience seem irrelevant and feeble as a response; and the going forth of young Michael Gillane from his bride to the French flag at Killala the only adequate tribute’.15 Not for the last time, Yeats deployed Cathleen ni Houlihan to mitigate criticism of a theatre that had declared itself against propaganda. Performance of a play which was the very essence of literary propaganda served to mix signals and earn in the warmth of response a benefit of doubt, at least for the time being. Perhaps, it seemed to suggest, there was to be a great gap between theatre principle and theatre practice. Despite the cheers, any nationalists in the audience who remained unconvinced by this gambit had a right to be wary. For Yeats in the winter of 1904 was less inclined to heed the call of Cathleen the daughter of Houlihan, than of Annie, the daughter of Horniman. The English tea heiress who had provided the financial wherewithal to establish the Abbey, while at first seeming as liberal in her attitudes as in her distribution of funds, soon made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the nationalist cause. While the Abbey benefactor felt inclined to pay for a venue to showcase the poetic experimentations of Yeats, she was less inclined toward anything which smacked of politics. ‘If anyone thinks’, she wrote to Synge, ‘that “Irish” or “National” are anything to me beyond mere words to distinguish a Society . . . they are very much mistaken’.16 At first appearance, the Abbey and the INTS were still distinct entities. The Abbey Theatre, it was declared, had been put at the disposal of the Society.

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But realpolitik soon told. The conflation of the two came as the society turned professional, and became the National Theatre Society Ltd, with its control centralized into the hands of the famous directorate of Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory. At that stage, a year later, the society would split once more, with seceders breaking away to form the Theatre of Ireland in consequence. After 1910, when Horniman’s influence was successfully cast off, the Abbey was made dependent on box office, and in 1925 it won a partial subsidy from the young Free State government; facts of funding that also kept the emphasis on nationality in flux. From the first, the capacity to fragment set up a long tradition of alternatives to the putative National Theatre, aspiring to the title of Not the Abbey: the Gate (1928), the Pike (1953), Field Day (1980). Nevertheless, in December 1904 this was still in the future, and the shift in power that came with the move to Abbey Street was only partially perceived. One issue which did cause concern was immediately evident. Horniman’s snobbery had led her to insist on a minimum ticket price of one shilling, whereas Dublin theatres as a rule set the price of their cheapest seats at sixpence. Although Lady Gregory reassured members that it was only a temporary measure to humour their patron, it would take another two years before admission to the theatre pit was reduced to the norm.17 D. P. Moran, a long standing adversary of Yeats’s, usually criticized the theatre movement for being too far removed from the Catholic cultural nationalism he himself adhered to. As a member of the maiden Abbey audience, however, he had two complaints. The first was a mordant poke at mainstream constitutional politics: the head of John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he reported, had obscured his view of the stage. There was surely a lesson there for all alert nationalists. His second reservation was more serious: Yeats’s declared freedom for drama was hardly convincing while, as he put it, ‘this un-commercial theatre bangs its doors on the despised sixpenny public’.18 Followers of the theatre society in previous seasons found themselves priced out of their loyal support, and this included family and friends of Society members. It was a discomforting loss for the players, and rankled all the way to the break up of the company the following year.19 The situation revealed how insistently the material existence of the Abbey rendered its operation a political entity. Rather than constructing a space that would establish an autonomous artistic realm, the process of realizing drama as a theatrical experience inevitably manifested the vision through the lens of social relations. And yet, the disappointment at admission costs indicates how far the insulation from the commercial imperatives followed by other Dublin theatres piqued expectation. If exclusive, the Abbey’s brassy bijou interior, with its Celtic and nationalist iconography, also showed pride in a new public cultural site. Similarly, despite his aristocratic posturing, Yeats’s ambitions for the theatre always offered up a utopian possibility to offset the materially minded objectives of his opponents. By such high ideals would he also be judged: accusations of hypocrisy testified to a sense of possibility

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opened up by the attempt. That the emancipatory energy offered by writers such as Synge could be made available was evidence of how much had been won; that ticket prices underlined vicious class (and colonial) relationships demonstrated how much had been lost.20 The paradox of the un-national nationalism of Ireland’s National Theatre was in part the product of the fact that nationalism was a broad church. If right leaning corporatist–nationalists like Griffith were impatient with the failure of the Abbey to hold fire until independence was won, left nationalists often applauded the same caustic criticism of bourgeois mores.21 Be that as it may, Yeats took care to temper the radical possibilities of the Abbey when it suited his own agenda, which brings us to one more absence at that opening night: George Bernard Shaw. John Bull’s Other Island had been commissioned for the new theatre, but its satire was too close to the bone for Yeats, who had shelved it with excuses about its over-ambitiousness.22 Shaw instead was brought within the ambit of another theatrical birthday, the first season of the J. H. Vedrenne-Granville Barker experiment in socially critical drama at the Royal Court Theatre in London. By the time of the Abbey opening, Shaw’s play had already debuted there, on 1 November 1904. It was a particularly neat irony that Shaw’s study of cultural economy between Irish and English emigrants, instead of disturbing Irish complacency about national catch-alls, ended up bolstering the political credentials of England’s incipient (if somewhat pale) avant-garde.23 Yeats’s political strategy in keeping Shaw at arms length was equally evident in embracing Lady Gregory. By closing the evening’s entertainment with her comedy Spreading The News, the atmosphere heightened by On Baile’s Shore and Cathleen ni Houlihan was disarmed. The ideological emphasis offered in the theatres of defiance and rebellion in the first two plays was displaced by a reassuring drama of misapprehension. A character such as Barney Fallon, who is accused of murder through a snowballing rumour with no more substance to it than his attempt to return a pitchfork to its owner, is a villain by accident. Misinterpretation, the play suggests, can form the basis on which reputations stand or fall. The comedy struck a chord, and the audience laughed at what even Griffith allowed as ‘highly amusing but wholly improbable’.24 The very tenuousness and the unlikeliness of Gregory’s plots added to the effect. Events are half-heard, poorly reported, mixed in with a delight of embellishment and love of gossip. In the whispering gallery of Dublin politics, Lady Gregory seemed to suggest, hers was one more indistinct voice, accepting a loose grip on reality, but hoping the audience would catch her soft-spoken appeal and hear her out. The implication was that if the critics in the auditorium would stay to listen, they might find that in the fullness of time the Abbey story was not as violent a narrative as they imagined. As on the first night, so later on: Lady Gregory typically mollified nationalist opinion where her co-directors antagonized, relaxing the tension between the Abbey’s supposedly opposing ambitions to be art house and National Theatre.

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But to have her short comedy close proceedings was no less a calculated act for all that. Yeats, taking to the stage for the first time in response to calls for a speech, indicated as much in echoing the shape of the evening’s programme with a literary allusion that spoke eloquently of the political craft ever present in the management of events – and perhaps, in the operation of the National Theatre in the decades to come: They would now be able [he declared] to take for their motto the legend over the gates described by Edmund Spenser: ‘Over the first gate was written ‘Be Bold!’; over the second was written, ‘Be Bold! Be Bold! and evermore be bold!’ and over the third was written, ‘Be Bold! be bold! and yet be not too bold!’25

Notes 1. From an account given in the Freeman’s Journal, providing a sneak preview, 15 December 1904. 2. Cheryl Herr (2001); Lionel Pilkington (2001); Mary Trotter (2001). 3. Morash’s book (2002) counterweights each of his epoch-reviewing chapters with a study of one specific ‘night at the theatre’. 4. Loren Kruger (2003). 5. Samhain, 3 (Sept. 1903), 4. 6. Adrian Frazier (1990). 7. Yeats (1979), The Variorum Edition of the Plays . . . p. 499. 8. United Irishman, 31 December 1904. 9. United Irishman, 12 April 1902. 10. United Irishman, 31 October 1903. For the various politics of this exchange, see Susan Canon Harris (2002), pp. 71–8; and P. J. Mathews (2003). 11. Yeats, United Irishman, 17 October 1903. 12. Griffith, United Irishman, 31 December 1904. 13. Yeats, Variorum Plays, p. 231. 14. Yeats, Variorum Plays, p. 229. 15. Freeman’s Journal, 28 December 1904. 16. W. J. McCormack (2002). 17. See for instance, Lady Gregory’s correspondence with Padraic Colum:‘. . . it was decided to let Miss Horniman have her way for a year or so.’ 9 January 1906 (Berg Collection, New York Public Library). 18. Leader, 7 January 1905. 19. Frazier (1990), pp. 108–48. 20. In this sense, the Abbey Theatre opening occasioned a complex site of colonial/anti-colonial activity for which Joe Cleary’s redefinition of colonialism as ‘a historical process in which societies of various kinds are differentially integrated into a world capitalist system’ can usefully serve. See Cleary (2003),‘ “Misplaced Ideas”? Colonialism, Location, and Dislocation in Irish Studies’, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory, ed. by Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Cork: Cork University Press), p. 44.

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21. Ben Levitas (2002), p. 232. See also Levitas (2003). 22. The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, III. 1901-1904, ed. by John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 661. 23. A comparison also suggested in passing by John Donoghue, ‘What is the Edwardian Theatre?’, in Michael R. Booth and Joel H. Kaplan (1996), p. 19. 24. United Irishman, 31 December 1904. 25. Freeman’s Journal, 28 December 1904. It should also be noted that Yeats’s quote selection was itself somewhat testing, given Spenser’s infamous denunciations of Irish obduracy in the sixteenth century.

II

Language Issues

7 The Development of Norway’s National Theatres Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

The year 2006 was the centenary of Ibsen’s death. The year 1999 marked the centenary of the founding of Norway’s Nationaltheatret. In 2005 Norway celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its independence from Sweden. These three centenary events are interconnected in significant ways that I will explore throughout this chapter. Although politically a young nation, Norway is historically very old, and its culture bears the traces of its roots in the saga literature of Scandinavia, its four-hundred-year link with Denmark, and the accelerated pace of nationalism from the latter half of the nineteenth century of which Nationaltheatret is one of the main representations. Norway actually has three National Theatres: Nationaltheatret , situated in the centre of Oslo; Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, Norway’s oldest theatre with roots in the mid-nineteenth century, and having since 1993 the status of a National Theatre; and Det Norske Teatret, a Nynorsk (New Norwegian)speaking National Theatre in Oslo. All three theatres are completely owned and subsidized by the Norwegian government and can therefore, from an economic and political standpoint, be considered National Theatres. But what about their cultural status? The objective of this chapter is to examine the roots of this tripartite structure, the significance of the shift from Bergen to Oslo, what niche each theatre occupies and how together these institutions give Norway its sense of what Loren Kruger calls ‘theatrical nationhood’. As Kruger notes, ‘theatrical nationhood manifests itself fully only in the course of the nineteenth century with the rise of mass national politics, “universal” (male) suffrage, and the demand of the people for legitimate representation as protagonist on the political stage.’1 Of the three official National Theatres of Norway, Nationaltheatret most closely fits this paradigm; indeed, it was the direct result of the nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century. Yet in some ways it significantly departs from the norm of theatrical nationhood as represented by National Theatres, and by tracing its development from its origins to the present day I will aim to show how this departure happened and why it is significant. 85

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Nationaltheatret Nationaltheatret was initially led by Bjørn Bjørnson, the son of Nobel prizewinning author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, until he resigned in 1907. It had no government funding at its inception and it remained a private theatre until 1927. Its building is remarkable in both location and structure: it exudes a sense of ‘place and occasion’ which, as Kruger writes, ‘signify the means and the site on which national prestige – the legitimacy and the renown of the nation in the eyes of its citizens as well as its rivals – is staged, acknowledged, and contested.’2 Statues of Ibsen and the elder Bjørnson flank either side of the entrance to a grand building that is just the kind of sumptuous neoclassical marble, gold and velvet palace, smack in the centre of the capital, that one thinks of in association with the term ‘National Theatre’. Designed by the distinguished architect Henrik Bull (nephew of Ole Bull), who was deeply influenced by German theatre architecture, it has a royal box that is still very much in use, grand foyers and lofty painted rococo ceilings, and paintings and sculptures by some of Norway’s greatest artists. Its imposing trompe l’œil fire curtain has a special place of affection in the hearts of actors and audiences alike. Part theatre, part art museum, the building gives off an air of dignity and solidity, not unlike a ‘pillar of society’. Thus in many ways Nationaltheatret is the textbook example of a National Theatre: situated in the country’s capital and its largest city; housed in purpose-built, sumptuous and imposing buildings set in a prominent location in the city centre; founded in the nineteenth century during a period of intense political transformation as the country was establishing its independence culturally, linguistically, and politically; organized and run almost entirely by a patriarchy of white men, with no ethnic diversity and with women’s participation limited to their roles as performers; initially criticized and challenged, yet a century on, triumphant and secure in its cultural prestige and its ability to attract the best performers, directors, and designers and the audiences for the productions. Yet Nationaltheatret does have a turbulent history of both internal and external strife and it does seem to have been able to maintain the delicate balance between tradition and innovation, producing both crowd-pleasing favourites and avant-garde, experimental, and groundbreaking work. It is this dualism in the role of the theatre within Norwegian culture that I want to look at in greater depth in this chapter. What Nationaltheatret also has that makes it perhaps unique as a National Theatre is a high international profile that transcends national boundaries and alleviates the borderline parochial tendency of so many National Theatres. The main reason for this is that Nationaltheatret has Ibsen, a playwright of both national and international relevance, and has very shrewdly and effectively traded on this cultural capital.3 It has since 1990 been host to the highly regarded Ibsen Festival, which has attracted productions from all over the world by noted directors

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such as Ingmar Bergman, John Barton, and many others. The undisputed prestige and stature of Ibsen today can easily obscure the fact of his castigation by his countrymen during much of his career; and the wholehearted embrace of his work and reputation by Nationaltheatret now belies the initial coolness between the playwright and the theatre. Over the ensuing century, as Ibsen’s reputation as the father of modern drama and a classic and canonical author solidified, Nationaltheatret rushed to embrace what Norway had once held at arm’s length in a preference for other playwrights of transitory or local interest. Before looking at this more closely, however, I want to try to situate Ibsen – and Nationaltheatret – in relation to the changing cultural politics of the 1890s.

Background: language and politics Some political and linguistic factors have to be taken into account with regard to Norway’s experience of founding and running National Theatres. First, Norway has had a long history of finding itself. As Frederick and Lise-Lone Marker point out, ‘the story of the premodern theatre in Ibsen’s Norway is, to a great extent, that of its search for and eventual achievement of an artistic identity and integrity of its own.’4 For over four hundred years (from 1380) Norway was ruled by Denmark, and then after throwing off the shackles of Danish rule in May 1814, it was united with Sweden six months later and only gained full independence as a sovereign nation in 1905. At that point Nationtheatret in Oslo was just six years old and had had a direct role in the final push to cultural independence. The linguistic implications of these shifting political alliances are important. For all those centuries of rule by Denmark, Danish was the dominant language of Norway. ‘Never has purer Danish been written in Norway than in the years after 1814’, notes one historian drily.5 Norwegian culture was Danish: the literary, artistic, and musical tastes in vogue in Copenhagen filtered through to Norway, tastes often deeply influenced by the French to begin with. Kristiania audiences mainly saw plays by Molière and other French dramatists or by Danish writers such as Ludvig Holberg, who was a good example of the Danish influence, being himself of Norwegian origin but having moved to Copenhagen for its flourishing literary scene. Before the rise of Ibsen and Bjørnson, ‘professional theatre in Norway was confined to visits by foreign troupes of uneven merit, performing a bill of fare that ranged from gymnastics, weight lifting, rope dancing, and magic tricks to productions of actual plays.’6 No wonder the need to find and articulate a native sense of self became an urgent national crisis that contributed to the establishment of institutions such as the National Theatre. Danish and Norwegian are the most alike of the modern Scandinavian languages. They have similar vocabulary and grammar, and it is mainly in the pronunciation that the languages most sharply diverge. To put it crudely,

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Danish is spoken at the back of the throat (as if you have potatoes in your mouth, as even many Danes will describe it) while Norwegian is spoken at the tip of the tongue, against the back of the teeth. (Bear in mind, though, that for the sake of simplicity when I say ‘Norwegian’ I’m speaking specifically of Bokmål and not Nynorsk or the many Norwegian dialects; more on this below.) Despite the difference in pronunciation, the lexical proximity of the two languages means that a Dane and a Norwegian can easily speak to each other and be understood, whereas Danes and Swedes are notoriously unable to communicate. Some of the main differences between Danish and Norwegian are the hard consonants in the latter, so that the soft ‘d’ in a Danish word like ‘gade’ (pronounced like the Icelandic ‘ð’) is replaced by a ‘t’ to make ‘gate’. Likewise the ‘g’ in Danish words becomes a ‘k’, and ‘b’ becomes ‘p’; thus the word ‘bøger’ (books) in Danish becomes ‘bøker’ in Norwegian, and ‘åbne’ (to open) becomes ‘åpne’. Each of these seemingly slight transformations was legally instituted through parliamentary language Acts and represented a key step toward signalling independence from Denmark. Language reform only came about after fierce debate in Parliament in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (a time dubbed maalstrid, or ‘language strife’) and the initiation of official language reform laws that would codify and institutionalize the changes. Ibsen’s literary language was Dano-Norwegian. In the dialogue of his plays he often uses constructions and words that are Norwegian, yet spelled with the soft consonants of Danish. Thus even in his use of language he straddles both sides of the language issue. His career coincided with the maalstrid and spanned those decades in the late nineteenth century when the struggle for a national Norwegian identity manifested itself primarily through literature, the arts, and linguistics. Other younger writers, such as Knut Hamsun and Arne Garborg, were on the rise, challenging traditional forms and exposing the subjects not addressed in novels before; indeed, Hamsun famously attacked Ibsen for only treating social issues and for ‘typediktning’, or portraying types rather than individuals. Above all this was the time of a linguistic revolution led by the writer and linguist Ivar Aasen, whose work forever changed the cultural landscape of Norway. In the 1850s, Aasen went out to the mountainous districts of Norway, spending a decade covering the entire country collecting dialects. He visited virtually every valley, no matter how isolated or remote. His idea (though he was by no means alone in this) was to develop a new language that would be completely Norwegian: it would be a blend of the dialects from all over the country plus Old Norsk, the language of the Icelandic sagas (the literary foundation of Scandinavian identity) and the foundation of the Scandinavian languages – a version of which you still hear today spoken in Iceland. Aasen, quite remarkably, did exactly this, so that by the 1870s Norway in effect had a brand new language forged out of these indigenous sources.

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The result was, not surprisingly, a sense of both excitement and division; some older writers like Ibsen and Bjørnson adhered to the standard DanoNorwegian (Riksmål or Bokmål) while many younger writers like Arne Garborg took up Aasen’s amalgamated language and wrote in Nynorsk (Landsmål) to try to establish it as a viable literary language. Slowly they broke through and to this day, Norway has these two official languages and also laws stipulating that a certain percentage of media broadcasting and book publishing must be in Nynorsk. In fact most books are published in both languages. In keeping with this proportion, one of the three National Theatres of Norway is Det Norske Teatret in Oslo, producing solely in Nynorsk. In short, distancing oneself from Danish language and literature was a crucial step for many who felt that Norway had let itself become dominated culturally and linguistically by Denmark to the peril of its own national identity. Throughout the nineteenth century the country’s capital was still named after the Danish king, Christian IV, who had built it as we still see much of it looking today (with neoclassical buildings like those in Copenhagen). The name Kristiania or Christiania was later changed back to Oslo, the original old Norwegian name before the union with Denmark in 1380, further signifying a return to its own roots. The maalstrid dramatically illustrates how the political and the linguistic were deeply intertwined. On the one hand you had those who spoke and supported Riksmål, or Bokmål, which was essentially Danish; on the other, the supporters of the newly conceived language of Nynorsk, or Landsmål. Yet it did not always follow that pro-nationalist writers wrote in Nynorsk; many writers who backed Norwegian independence, such as Bjørnson, wrote in Bokmål. Indeed, the conflict often divided people along generational and regional lines rather than party ones. Ibsen, himself a fierce advocate of Pan-Scandinavianism rather than anything more local, always managed somehow to remain aloof from these intense language struggles, just as he was able to evade any sort of overt ideological or aesthetic alliance. The DanoNorwegian of Ibsen’s plays would have been the language of Nationaltheatret when it opened in Kristiania in 1899, and its founders were well aware of its highly visible and symbolic role within the context of emerging Norwegian independence. Already half a century before, at the first performance in January 1850 at Bergen’s Norske Teater (one of Nationaltheatret’s predecessors), a reviewer had written: ‘There can be as little reason for speaking of “our art” when we do not freely produce it ourselves out of our own spirit, as for speaking of a flower when it is foreign, made of cloth, and tied to a sterile Norwegian stem.’7

The early National Theatre(s) One of the theatre’s historians describes Nationaltheatret as ‘a temple of free speech’.8 Since it just celebrated its hundredth birthday in 1999, we are

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fortunate in having numerous fresh sources looking back at its history. One of the recent histories points out that Nationaltheatret is ‘Norway’s oldest theatre’, since it was the ‘direct successor of the old Christiania [sic] Theatre, which opened in 1837’.9 Indeed, before the theatre was established significant steps had been taken, starting half a century before, that paved the way for this event. The first gesture toward a National Theatre happened in Bergen, not Kristiania. In the mid-nineteenth century, Kristiania was not the cultural capital of Norway as much as Bergen was. After all, Bergen had been a port of the Hanseatic League and had frequent and direct links with the rest of Europe. Much of the artistic ‘scene’ happened in Bergen. By contrast, Kristiania was a rural backwater. Ole Bull, Norway’s most prominent musician, a gifted violinist and man of the arts in general, founded the Norske Teater (not to be confused with the current theatre of that name) in 1850 in Bergen. The young Ibsen joined it in 1852 and received his valuable practical training in the theatre in the subsequent decade of his affiliation to it; it folded in 1863 but was revived as Den Nationale Scene (The National Stage) in 1876.10 In many ways Ibsen’s subsequent shift from Bergen to Kristiania/Oslo is paradigmatic. The Kristiania Norske Theater opened in 1852, with an allNorwegian-speaking company, and was directed by Ibsen from 1857 to 1862. From then on, the capital becomes the main focus for the country’s theatrical activity. But it was Bull’s Norske Teater in Bergen that ‘was destined to occupy a unique place in the history of Norwegian theatre …. It became the bastion of the National Theatre movement … [and] the signpost of a new era in Norwegian theatre art.’11 While Norway was trying out these different National Theatre projects, Denmark’s Kongelige Teater (Royal Theatre) had been going strong since 1748 and was enjoying its peak of popularity in the mid-nineteenth century under the direction of the husband and wife team of Johannes and Louise Heiberg. The Kongelige Teater had a monopoly on Danish theatre until the late nineteenth century. This in turn dictated what Norwegians saw on their own stages. The Danish influence, along with a strong German one, continued to shape the repertoire and the running of Nationaltheatret under Bjørn Bjørnson’s tenure there, rather more than many could have wished in light of Norway’s struggle to establish its own cultural identity of which the very gesture of founding a National Theatre was supposed to be a crucial part. Agitation for a National Theatre in the capital began already in the 1880s. In 1881, when the proposal was put forward to build a theatre that would occupy the plot of land adjacent to the university, the palace, and the parliament, where indeed the theatre was finally erected, the university objected on moral grounds. It is illuminating to read their official statement, which suggests a certain attitude toward theatre at the time: There is no doubt that the atmosphere of peace and sobriety which should pervade the university environment could be disturbed by such a

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building …. While acknowledging the value and significance of dramatic art, and the instructive and cultivating influence of a theatre, its very nature and activity are so different from that of the other three [parliament, university, and royal palace] that they together would not constitute an harmonic whole. In reply to this Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote: ‘May I inform you that a theatre sharpens the mind for independent research and justice, which your institutions are supposed to be fostering, and sweeps away the humbug which might be gathered there.’12 Some have noted the irony of the university of all institutions objecting on moral grounds to having a theatre on its doorstep, since, as Hamsun, Jæger and so many other novelists depicted , university students generated a culture of youthful debauchery. Beginning with this opposition, we can chart a series of excruciatingly slow steps toward the goal of finally organizing and erecting the theatre and its company; along the way, obstacles included lack of funding, opposition in parliament, and construction setbacks attendant on trying to build on what was essentially a swamp. Even after its successful founding and opening, the theatre was under constant pressure from the public, the critics, internal rivalries that threatened to undermine it, and rival theatres established by disgruntled or breakaway actors and their retinues. The impression is of an institution teetering from one crisis to another, never completely secure in its financial or aesthetic position, yet somehow managing to sink its roots into the cultural life of the city. It was also, right from the start, very much a male enterprise. Nationaltheatret’s founding was driven by the efforts of an elite group of men from the cultural aristocracy of Kristiania in the late nineteenth century, or, to be precise, these men and their sons, uncles, nephews, and cousins. The roster of names of those involved reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Norway’s most distinguished families – the populous Bulls (Ole, Henrik, Georg, Edvard, and Johan Peter among them), the Bjørnsons, the Ibsens, and many other scions and their dynasties, a list complicated by intermarriage – as with Ibsen’s and Bjørnson’s offspring. Women were consigned to the wings, both literally and figuratively; in the story of Nationaltheatret’s founding, women played significant roles only on stage or as the occasional playwright of choice in a given season, which was rare. This is surprising when one considers that Norway was one of the leaders in early feminist writing during the mid-nineteenth century, with such writers as Amalie Skram and Camilla Collett producing ground-breaking works that influenced subsequent authors, including Ibsen. This raises questions about the relationship between feminism and nationalism, as one might conclude quite naturally that the two were incompatible at this historical moment: that they in fact had mutually exclusive agendas, with feminism’s inherent liberalism at odds with the nationalist movement’s inherent conservativism. Later on, Nationaltheatret acquired more female

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input but it did not get its first female director until 1988 when Ellen Horn became one of three co-directors for a two-year period, eventually becoming its director in 1992. Of course Ibsen, so compelling a feminist, has always figured prominently in Nationaltheatret’s repertoire. Perhaps as ‘Ibsen’s Own Stage’ Nationaltheatret will always have a built-in element of progressivism. This is reiterated in many histories of the theatre, even while such histories also insist that there is so much more to Norwegian theatre than ‘just’ Ibsen. As Annette Mürer writes, ‘although we take its presence for granted, Nationaltheatret was in fact born out of pure defiance, forced into existence by a few intrepid souls, nurtured and safeguarded by many, many others since.’13 Histories of the theatre emphasize its continual artistic development by way of evidence, such as the press response to controversial productions and the presence of a collection of newspaper cartoons over the last century that capture such controversies, a collection housed in the theatre itself. The theatre, then, seems to be as much a museum preserving a sense of the evolution of Norway’s cultural identity as it is a working theatre. Its location has been noted as heavily symbolic of this central role: it sits across from the old university which once spurned and opposed it and in between the royal palace and the parliament. It is a popular notion that from this vantage point, Nationaltheatret can keep an eye on these three important cultural and social institutions. More importantly, its location both generates and legitimizes its cultural status: as Kruger notes, ‘a theatre in the center of the city confers on the cultural practices housed there a legitimacy generally denied to performances of the same text in a peripheral space.’14 This also signals why the shift from Bergen to Kristiania/Oslo was inevitable; even deep cultural and historical roots of the kind Den Nationale Scene could lay claim to could not rival the claim of political centrality of the new self-declared National Theatre. In addition, throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, Norway’s capital had grown and developed a vibrant literary and artistic life so that in this sense too it was the logical place to open a new National Theatre. It is significant that contemporary historians of Nationaltheatret emphasize the theatre’s progressive element and depict it as tending toward the edgy and controversial more than the staid and conservative. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that it was both, but the main question is how it reconciles these two quite different sides and maintains a delicate balance to this day. ‘A comprehensive theory of the institution of theatre’, Kruger writes, ‘cannot ignore the continued dialectic between economic and political constraints and aesthetic norms governing theatre practice, as well as the discourses that may represent one as the other.’15 Nationaltheatret exemplifies this dialectic in its practices as well as its origins and has developed a way of trading on the tension between the economic/political and the aesthetic rather than being subsumed by it. This was not always so easy, as is shown by the opening nights of the theatre in September 1899.

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Opening ceremonies The three-day extravaganza that marked the theatre’s opening makes a great story but it also directly relates to the kinds of questions I’m exploring here about the compatibility of aesthetic and nationalist enterprises in the theatre. In anticipation of the opening, as Nils Johan Ringdal tells us in his monumental history of Nationaltheatret, both Ibsen’s and Bjørnson’s input was sought in the form of commentary that would go into the programme. By this time, the two great authors were in-laws since Ibsen’s son, an influential diplomat, had married Bjørnson’s daughter ten years before, and the marriage produced a grandchild to them both. Yet Ibsen and Bjørnson still maintained a frosty relationship founded on a long-standing literary rivalry which simply would not die. At this time, Bjørnson had written Norway’s national anthem and is a leading figure in its move toward independence, and his son Bjørn is the director of Nationaltheatret. The elder Bjørnson’s contribution to the programme, sent swiftly by telegram, is simple and straightforward: ‘The Norwegians are a people who are now moving back home.’ By contrast, Ibsen dithers and finally sends a stiff handwritten reply stating that he is ‘unable to deliver any useful statement’ because he is currently fully absorbed by ‘a new literary work’,16 namely When We Dead Awaken. But both men were there at the opening, as contemporary newspaper cartoons wonderfully show us. Up in the second balcony is the rather surly figure of Arne Garborg, Nynorsk’s foremost literary champion, who had to pay his own way since he was not an official guest; shortly before the opening he had proclaimed that ‘Nationaltheatret could not be considered national until it had staged its first Nynorsk production.’17 Even Ibsen and Bjørnson came to the theatre disgruntled since the unveiling of the statues in their honour that flank the doors of the theatre to this day had been disastrous: Stephan Sinding’s sculptures were ridiculed for making the two literary lions Ibsen and Bjørnson look like ‘cheesemongers’, as they appear to be standing on great wheels of cheese rather than dignified plinths. Each of the three opening nights was devoted to a different Norwegian playwright. Ludvig Holberg was on the first night’s programme: scenes from various plays including Barselstuen (or The Birthing Room) and Mester Gert Westphaler. They were not a success: the audience hardly laughed and the pieces seemed shoddily rehearsed. The critics, however, generally abstained from comment on the performance itself and focused instead on the building, praising its majestic qualities and proclaiming that it had surpassed its models in Europe. ‘Now Kristiania could compare itself favourably with most European capitals’, Ringdal notes.18 Also on the programme was music by Grieg and Svendsen, Norway’s best-known composers. The second evening of the opening festivities was devoted to Ibsen, who was of course sitting there in the same seat as before. An Enemy of the People was performed, and later drew complaints from Ibsen about its heavy treatment. The final evening

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was strikingly different in tone. It was devoted to Bjørnson, ‘Norway’s foremost superstar’ as Ringdal puts it, the author of works seen as encapsulating and expressing a pure Norwegianism and of course the father of Nationaltheatret’s director. In this ‘flamboyantly patriotic evening’ the audience soared to new heights of nationalistic fervour witnessing the elder Bjørnson’s folk play Sigurd Jorsalfar with Grieg himself conducting his own overture to it.19 Altogether more uplifting than the two previous opening nights, the events nonetheless drew newspaper commentary the next day that was designed to praise Bjørnson without devaluing Ibsen. The programmes chosen for these three opening nights thus sent an important collective signal to the public: Nationaltheatret would foreground its literary roots; it would show work in Bokmål and not shy away from the Danish influence; and its repertoire would represent the best of both the old and the new. In short, it would represent an image of Norwegianness that leaned toward the cosmopolitan and the European and away from the rural, the regional and the local. One saw pieces featuring ‘sæterjente’, fresh-faced mountain lasses sporting national dress, but one also saw plenty of productions directly bearing the hallmarks of the latest continental styles of theatre. This was largely due to the younger Bjørnson’s influence. Nationaltheatret continued under Bjørnson’s direction to mount large-scale, ambitious productions that helped shape audience expectations of Nationaltheatret. Bjørnson had studied theatre abroad, particularly influenced by his time with the Meiningen troupe in Germany, and he brought this to bear very much on his own productions at home. He also insisted on doing opera, for which he retained on salary a disproportionately large group of musicians and singers which often brought him criticism. So for almost the first decade of its life, the content and style of the Nationaltheatret were very much forged by the hand of Bjørnson. It would be left to his successors to introduce a more radical approach to repertoire and directorial techniques.

Nationalistic fervour and internationalist outlook One of the interesting and enduring challenges for Nationaltheatret – and the other National Theatres of Norway, and perhaps most National Theatres throughout the world – is how to celebrate nationhood while at the same time looking beyond it. How to be national without being narrowly nationalistic or parochial; and how to be international without losing sight of what makes the country unique? How (and whether) to promote aesthetic innovation? It seems to me that Nationaltheatret has a sort of built-in insurance of this kind of balance – a kind of innate tension-management – in Ibsen, who represents both sides so well. Because it is the self-appointed home of Ibsen, Nationaltheatret is able to avoid one of the banes of National Theatres everywhere: the sacrifice of aesthetic innovation in the interest of (or obligatory staging of) works of national relevance. New realizations of Ibsen’s works are produced

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every year at Nationaltheatret and are highly innovative partly because, no matter what one does to Ibsen, many of his works (particularly the post-1878 ones) remain current and popular and retain their initial avant-garde aura. In fact, it is highly likely that the places where one can still get a true sense of the range of Ibsen’s playwriting are Norway’s National Theatres, since outside Norway Ibsen’s œuvre is often reduced to A Doll’s House or Hedda Gabler. In addition, Nationaltheatret sponsors a festival of new and contemporary playwriting which also meets the needs of both aesthetic innovation and national interest without relying on Ibsen. The two festivals alternate each year. The 2005 Festival for Contemporary Theatre, for example, included the work of such writers as Sarah Kane, the brothers Prezniakov, Zigarev, Jelinek, Handke, and Frayn. In other words, audiences have the spectrum from the familiar to the brand new to choose from. The theatre now has another worldrenowned Norwegian playwright, Jon Fosse, whom the directors maintain is played almost as much as Ibsen around the world.20

The meaning of Norwegian nationalism Paul Binding argues that the nationalistic bent among Norwegian writers and artists lies partially in the power of the specific landscape: ‘the major Norwegian writers – Ibsen, Sigrid Undset, Knut Hamsun, Tarjei Vesaas – are not only indissoluble from their awareness of Nature but have created characters who define themselves and each other in terms of their relationship to it. And not only the writers’, since composers like Grieg identified themselves so strongly with the Norwegian wilderness.21 The nationalistic bent also lies in a sense of Norwegianness, ‘a quality which assumed wider currency and greater importance as the twentieth century advanced. Norway is after all unique among European countries in having, in its referendum of 1994, rejected EU membership. The intense feeling for the land and for the pervasive folkinheritance it has preserved’ can be found among so many Norwegian artists from Ibsen and Grieg to Hamsun to the present.22 In terms of modernism, particularly Ibsen and other early modernists, this had specific repercussions. ‘Modernists, dedicated internationalists whose inspiration came from the experiences and experiments of a wider Europe rather than from the indigenous Norwegian … tended to be isolated from their country’s mainstream’, producing a kind of ‘fissure in Norwegian culture … that opened up well over half a century ago. From the late 1960s onwards, Norway, partly in response to that decade’s questioning of capitalist values, immersed itself in reanimating its still living folk inheritance, to such an extent that young Norwegians – whether artists or not – are more deeply versed in their traditions, especially the musical, than their counterparts in any other developed society.’23 This does present problems, however. ‘Does declared love of one’s birthright convert valuable independence and rejection of the crudely commercial into a less valuable isolationism?’ Binding asks. You have to maintain a balance

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between the ‘atavistic, the specifically Norwegian and the multi-ethnic, the consciously internationalist’. Binding writes that ‘Norway is right to cherish the culture its natural terrain shaped and helped evolve, but only if it does so … hospitably, as a gift that can be offered to others …. In Professor Aarseth’s words à propos Ibsen, we need the sun and rain, the forest and the river, not just the conservatory, the attic-room and the fish-pond.’24 Has Nationaltheatret been able to maintain such a balance? Or does it epitomize the problem of nationalistic fervour sacrificing internationalism, and with it avant-garde experimentalism? In other words, has its mandate to represent the nation – an inherently conservative mandate, in which politics takes precedence over aesthetics – suppressed its artistic inclinations and ambitions? To what extent is Ibsen as its most valuable asset the saving factor, the means by which Nationaltheatret can have it both ways – show a patriotic, nationalistic side while also being artistically daring and innovative? Or has Ibsen been made ‘safer’ by being the poster boy for an inherently conservative theatrical nationhood, in Toril Moi’s words, the ‘old fuddy-duddy realist’? Has his radical work been tamed by being linked with Nationaltheatret, or is it the other way around – has the theatre been able to sustain a more radical profile than most National Theatres simply through its foregrounding of Ibsen? It might look this way from the outside, but ‘Norway is still a land of conservative theatre’, writes Bengt Calmeyer, who blames this in part on the paterfamilias of the Norwegian stage, Ibsen, whose ‘spirit still hovers over Norwegian theatre’.25 The playwright who for much of the rest of the world is still considered a pioneer and a radical is often seen in his own country as a staid realist whose dominance stifles new playwriting talent and theatrical innovation. The National Theatres of Norway sit on ‘the border between aesthetics and politics’, as Kruger puts it,26 but they have the ability to turn this liminal status to their advantage. Perhaps spreading the burden of staging nationalism over three theatres has prevented any one from becoming too ‘nationalistic’. Each one has therefore a certain independence and room to develop and grow while being at the same time united through the common bond of designation as ‘national’ theatre. As Gerd Stahl, the head of the department of dramaturgy for Nationaltheatret, puts it: Norway is a very young nation … and we have still perhaps a very strong sense of identity. On the other hand, we live in a more and more internationalized situation. Both the mandate and the vision for a modern national theatre must perhaps be to mirror the world in a way that challenges our own self-conceptualization? Theatre as an art form can give perspective, pose questions, upset …. In Norway there is no tradition for the authorities interfering with the politics of theatrical repertoire. In fact, in the 1970s it actually seemed to support the theatre, at a time when part of the repertoire critically engaged current societal problems.27

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Stahl’s comments seem to indicate a sense of theatre as culturally central rather than peripheral or marginal in terms of developing a balance between the national and the international, and challenging Norway’s ‘self-conceptualization’. At a time when theatre’s role in many cultures is attenuated rather than growing, this is significant. Certainly the theatre is one of the main places for showcasing language, which is central to Norwegian identity. The two official languages of Norway (and we have not even taken account of the fact that there is also Sami) are represented in the National Theatres, but on separate stages. Det Norske Teatret was founded in 1912 by Arne Garborg and Hulda Garborg for performance in Nynorsk. The theatre has grown and evolved with the times; as its website states, it now has three stages with a flexible capacity, and mounts 12–15 of its own productions each year, plus matinées and guest productions from within Norway and from abroad. The repertoire spans family shows, musicals, and modern and classic dramas, and all are played in Nynorsk. Det Norske Teatret thus has all the Nynorsk productions and the other two stages tend to work in Bokmål. From a positive perspective, this means that Nynorsk is so strong that it has its own theatre, and this is also the largest and most modern theatre in the capital. On the negative side, this looks segregationist: Nynorsk is relegated to its own theatre, rather than being integrated into the mainstream Norwegian cultural life. It depends on how you look at it. In 1993, the government put state-supported theatre into three groups: (1) National Theatres, which receive all their funding from the central government; these include Nationaltheatret, Norske Teatret, Nationale Scene, Riksteatret and the Sami theatre; (2) major regional theatre centres, mainly supported by the central government but also by county and municipality (theatres in Stavanger, Tronheim and Tromsø); (3) regional theatres, funded by the county. ‘While this formula apparently honours Norway’s traditional decentralization of resources and authority, it also formalizes a hierarchy of theatres that some consider unNorwegian.’28 As this and the comment by Gerd Stahl (cited above) indicate, the question of what is Norwegian continues to dominate the discussions about theatre in Norway from the late eighteenth century to this day, and a National Theatre’s engagement with the question of national identity makes or breaks its legitimacy.

Notes 1. Loren Kruger (1992), p. 3. 2. Kruger, op.cit., p. 12. 3. As Kruger points out, this and other concepts developed by Pierre Bourdieu are particularly useful for theorizing theatrical nationhood. See for example Bourdieu, (1993) The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (Cambridge: Polity), passim. 4. Frederick and Lise-Lone Marker (1996), p. 131.

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5. Harald og Edvard Beyer (1978), Norsk Litteratur Historie (Olso: Aschehoug), p. 126; (my translation). 6. Marker and Marker, op.cit., pp. 131–2. 7. Laurence Senelick (1991), p. 144. 8. Annette Mürer (1997), p. 7. 9. Ibid. 10. To provide some context here: Ibsen in 1863 wrote Kongsemnerne, which takes place in the 1200s and deals with Norwegian civil wars. At this stage in his career, he is an ardent nationalist involved in administering these new Norwegian theatres and writing his saga plays. This soon changes when he is refused even a modest stipend from Parliament and, deeply embittered, moves abroad and trains a deeply critical eye on his country in such plays as Brand and Peer Gynt (both in the mid-1860s). 11. Marker and Marker, op.cit., p. 132. 12. Mürer, op.cit., p. 81. 13. Mürer, op.cit., p. 7. 14. Kruger, op.cit., p. 13. 15. Ibid. 16. Nils Johan Ringdal (2000), Nationaltheatrets Historie, 1899–1999 (Oslo: Gyldendal), p. 8. 17. Ringdal, op.cit., p. 9; (my translation). 18. Ringdal, op.cit., p. 10. 19. Marker and Marker, op.cit., pp. 187–8. 20. Private communication from Gerd Stahl to the author (18 October 2005). 21. Paul Binding, ‘Letter from Bergen’, Times Literary Supplement (26 July 2002), p. 15. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Bengt Calmeyer, ‘Norwegian Theatre: More than just Ibsen’, an article written for the website of Utenriksdepartmentet (Norway’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs), 6 (consulted 16/3/2006). www.odin.dep.no/. 26. Kruger, op.cit., p. 187. 27. My translation. 28. Harry Lane, entry on Norway in Martin Banham (ed.) (1995), The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 801.

8 Justification as National Throughout Changing Times: The National Theatre of Finland Pirkko Koski

How does a National Theatre legitimate its practice and position in a bilingual country, where the theatre representing the second official language (Swedish) also defines itself as a National Theatre, where opera and ballet are also national, where the last representative of the strong tradition of workingclass theatres holds a special national status, and where the whole spectrum of theatres is comprised of institutions in large and medium towns receiving state funding? Moreover the administration of the most official of all the National Theatres, Suomen Kansallisteatteri (‘Finland’s National Theatre’) is, paradoxically, largely private (even when its funding comes mostly from the state): the original shares have been transferred to the theatre foundation itself, and the Theatre’s administration invites new board members when it finds the need to do so. Finland’s National Theatre (named ‘the Finnish Theatre’ until 1902) has managed, however, to justify its national status throughout the radically changing times. Its position became stable under the protection of the Finnish-speaking nationalist movement of the late 1800s, as happened to many of the marginal states in the empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary who later obtained their independence. The National Theatre today inherited its aims and the central models of practice from that historic period; however, maintaining its national legitimacy in the present has required new kinds of applications and justifications in these times of social change. The National Theatre’s identity at the start of the new millennium is built both on practice that is seen as proper for a national arts institution which follows its tradition, and on defining a clear difference between this theatre and other institutions that are aiming to gain national status or recognition. What makes this theatre national in Finland? Naming, funding, official statements, people’s representation, or other factors? What makes it different from other institutions with some distinctive national characteristics? I will discuss these questions by surveying the strategies of the National Theatre and by comparing them with other Finnish theatres which have 99

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also been named ‘national’: Svenska Teatern i Helsingfors (The Swedish Theatre) and Suomen Kansallisooppera (The National Opera of Finland including the National Ballet). However, the special national status of Tampereen Työväen Teatteri (The Tampere Workers’ Theatre) and the shortlived Suomen Työväenteatteri (Finland’s Workers’ Theatre) could not attain the same honorary position, in spite of their special state aid and consequent political support. Efforts to maintain a national children’s theatre, Pieni Suomi (‘Small Finland’) also ended due to financial difficulties. These companies’ histories, however, shed light upon the conditions of national legitimation. Adapting Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation, the National Theatre as an institution can be seen as a construction without natural legitimation. This becomes apparent through the study of the National Theatre of Finland, which by no means represents the ‘whole’ nation. Although born from the elite, the Fennomanic movement of the nineteenth century was able, however, to sell the Theatre as representative of the nation and of the people both to the media and the public, and even to many generations of researchers.1 The Theatre has asserted its representativeness in different ways. In Finland, theatres have had strong links with society, and also with the ‘people’. Legitimation as national also includes popular support, but the National Theatre seems to differentiate itself from other theatres by being ‘popular’ in a special way, which has its roots in the years of the ‘national awakening’ and which appears today as a cultural attitude which denies entertainment.2 In its early years, the Theatre also strived to create a national centre separate from Swedish cultural and Russian political rule, while today its national importance is partly based on its internationalism. Today’s National Theatre operates between tradition and innovation, the latter following the artistic requirements outlined already in its beginning and the former adjusting itself to differing contexts. S. E. Wilmer’s classification of geography, language, ethnicity and aesthetics in the process of selection while writing national theatre histories3 is applicable here as well. In Finland, language especially has influenced the historical legitimation process. Finland’s National Theatre has defined itself through language, as has the Swedish ‘national’ Theatre, both stressing their differences from each other. Geography has outlined ‘the others’ of the National Theatre in East (Russia) and West (Sweden), especially in earlier years, serving linguistic and ethnic needs to be separately identified. Today, language has a different role than developed in the past but is still significant to Finnish society. Geography has become a way to differentiate from other local theatres at home by joining European networks and through them the honorary National Theatres in Europe. As political and ideological movements have lost much of their importance, aesthetics and repertoire especially have become central in today’s legitimation process.

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Becoming a National Theatre among national theatres The Finnish Theatre, the predecessor of Finland’s National Theatre, defined the founding of a Finnish theatre and the development of Finnish ‘theatre literature’ through its aims as stated in the rules of its support foundation of 1872.4 It is apparent that, in terms of both performances and plays, ‘Finnish’ was defined geographically as well as according to language. A few years later there was a discussion about the fusion of the Finnish- and the Swedishspeaking theatres, but the project did not go ahead and the debt-ridden support foundation was replaced by a shareholders company, founded in 1877 to sustain the Finnish-speaking theatre.5 As the theatre underwent changes, the representation and voice of the nationalist Finnish movement grew stronger in its government; but, after the closing of the opera department in the early years, it is also obvious that a new audience of lower-class people was being searched for through programming, in addition to the core group of theatregoers consisting of the new Finnish-speaking upper class. The theatre needed popular support in a country where the educated population of Finnish speakers was so small.6 The support for the Theatre also became broad in practice, as exemplified by funds being raised in many country towns to support its work. This was aided by the political pressure from Russia, which unified the nation at the turn of the twentieth century, but also, paradoxically, by the division of the country into two separate language areas. When the theatre moved into its present building during the 1902–3 season, its name was changed to Finland’s National Theatre without any specific decision made on the issue. A history of the theatre, dating from less than a decade after this, shows interesting points that have to do with national legitimacy: ‘Even as it had been long ago recognized that the theatre would deserve a nomination as the “National Theatre”; and even though the founding of smaller, touring companies in the countryside seemed to offer a reason to name the capital-based, oldest national stage with a specific name; for some reason the name had been withdrawn from use for as long as the theatre had to put up with the miserable wooden hut that the Arkadia theatre [the previous building] had become’, writes Aspelin-Haapkylä in his history.7 The National Theatre’s status was justified both by stability and a dignified performance space. Soon after the new building was complete, when it was noticed that some of the old props and other property had been left without an owner, the theatre practice was separated from the ownership of the building by founding an Incorporated Company for it specifically, the purpose of which remained to ‘cherish the theatre for Finnish speaking dramatic arts’. In order to centralize the shares of the theatre, a special foundation was later established. According to the new rule in 1930, the purpose of this National Theatre Foundation is to ‘forever secure the use of the theatre building in Helsinki … as the cradle of Finnish speaking performing arts’ and in order to fulfil this aim,

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the Foundation attempts to gain as many shares of the Incorporated Company as possible. The members of the Foundation’s government are appointed for their lifetime, and the Foundation appoints its new members.8 During the following decades the ownership of the theatre turned wholly inwards: most shares of the Company have gradually become the property of the Foundation, that is to say the theatre itself. Thus Finland’s National Theatre is far from being state owned, and the Foundation’s original members or their appointed followers with cultural hegemony hold an important position in its decision making. The status of the National Theatre was stable until the end of the 1930s, but after the Second World War the Theatre had to re-legitimate its position. A left-wing movement tried to make the company a state-owned theatre, following the model which was generally used in those countries which did not manage to maintain their sovereignty under Soviet pressure. The theatre protected itself with its legal status as a privately owned institution.9 The hegemonic power around the National Theatre also showed up as a successful ‘other’ in the endeavours to keep alive a new Finland’s Workers’ Theatre which was the second choice in the efforts to found a (leftist) state theatre. This political institution which was founded by a leftist government, instead of developing organically did not attract audiences and, regardless of its secure financial status, the effort died in less than ten years. Finland did not get a permanent state theatre. The Finnish (National) Theatre was the first domestic Finnish-speaking theatre. The country had nonetheless seen different amounts of theatrical touring for many centuries before, and in 1860 a Swedish theatre was founded in Helsinki, called the Nya Teatern (the New Theatre), which from 1886 was named the Svenska Teatern i Helsingfors (the Swedish Theatre). The stone building was owned by the Swedish-speaking Finns, but most of its actors came from Sweden. The Swedish-speaking population comprised of people who had gone through education in Swedish, the small landowning upper class, and the rural population and fishermen from the coastal areas. Finland had been a part of Sweden until 1809 when it became an autonomous area within Russia, and the main language of governance and education was until the end of the nineteenth century mainly Swedish.10 In terms of ownership, both Finland’s National Theatre and the Swedish Theatre were equally distant from the state and the municipalities/cities. Also, neither one can be seen as having represented the whole nation because they were mainly serving only their own linguistic communities, but the Finnish-speaking population gained a lead over the decades and was quantitatively a lot larger with an increasing population when compared to the Swedish speakers, while it also had a strong ideological background. From the point of view of the Swedish-speaking population, the question of representation is assumed to be more complicated. The efforts of the Swedish Theatre to become a second National Theatre were based on the events in

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1916 of the Swedish-speaking Finns’ revolt. They became bored with performing in supporting roles in their own theatre and their supporters in the funding association gained control of the Theatre by obtaining the majority of its shares. The Swedish Theatre became domestic and, in the minds of the Swedish-speaking Finnish population, a Swedish-speaking National Theatre. The status of the Swedish Theatre as a ‘National Theatre’ also met with acceptance among the Finnish-speaking population at the end of the 1940s, and a law about state funding for theatres was passed in the 1990s, according to which the Swedish Theatre received extra national appreciation through a legislative state subsidy, which was different from the subsidies given to the municipal theatres. The Russian Theatre, which existed from the latter part of the nineteenth century until the independence of Finland in 1917, belonged to the group of the official regional theatres in the Russian empire. If it were to be considered as a National Theatre, its context would be within the Russian empire rather than within Finland.11 If we want to consider it as ‘national’, the ‘nation’ in this instance would be Russia with its centre in St. Petersburg. In the 1870s, the early years of the Finnish Theatre, the opera department formed the more important part of the enterprise. Its first director, Kaarlo Bergbom, took great interest in staging opera, and it seems to have also been popular among the Fennomanic upper-class audiences who spoke originally in Swedish and did not wholly master Finnish.12 However, the opera department of the Finnish Theatre was closed for economic reasons and for a few decades the country saw opera performances primarily in the Swedish Theatre. A private Finnish Opera was founded in the 1910s and in the early 1920s a ballet company was attached to it. The earlier Russian Alexander Theatre was transferred in 1919 to the ownership of the Finnish Opera. This institution got a stronger national structure in the 1940s, and in 1956 received the name and status of Finland’s National Opera (and the National Ballet).13 The official ‘nationalization’ of the Opera and the Ballet only gained its justification from a broad range of the public when the lavish new opera house was built in 1993. In connection with this change, the Opera and Ballet got beautiful spaces, though opera never became an art form for all. Their national legitimation was based in showing, as was the aim of the Finnish nationalists at the turn of the twentieth century, ‘the readiness … to become one of the cultured nations’.14 It has come closest to a national, and at best even popular, audience with the performance of Finnish operas, some of which have achieved international recognition. Until 1993 the National Theatre and the National Opera had fixed state aid, as the level of state aid was generally determined by the Ministry of Education on the recommendation of the State Dramatic Council. From 1993 onwards state aid for cultural activities has been included in the central government’s legislative grants-in-aid system, but these two theatres have remained outside

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the system and have their own clause in the state budget, emphasizing their national status. The Swedish Theatre and the Tampere Workers’ Theatre are included in the system but have in its regulations an extra subsidy because of their national importance.15 This is the most official way to authorize the National Theatre’s role as national; Finland has no general theatre law. An arts institution cannot legitimate its position permanently by its governing practices and funding. However, the National Theatre does need to justify its position as a national institution and as different from other theatres, in order to maintain its status in the field of theatre. The refurbishment of the historical building at the beginning of the new millennium has raised interest in the theatre’s tradition as part of the national history, but theatrical innovations have more often been realized on the smaller stages built during the late decades of the twentieth century. The City Theatre of Helsinki has surpassed the National Theatre in the number of stages, performances and spectators, and countless emerging theatres are taking a significant role in developing theatrical expression. However, the programming of Finland’s National Theatre became, and still is, significant in proving the theatre’s cultural relevance.

Language and nationality The director of the Finnish Theatre/Finland’s National Theatre, Kaarlo Bergbom, published in 1872 the programming manifesto for the emerging theatre, within which the language was a central point of focus. Finnish was only on its way to becoming a language for education and literature, and the theatre was supposed to help develop it: ‘Just how important a medium a National Theatre would be, in giving birth to a model language free from all dialects, is proved by the example of other countries’, wrote Bergbom, already using the name of a National Theatre.16 The language question was important in the early stages of the National Theatre, but, even as it changed with time, the significance of language remained obvious, and it is visible still at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In its early decades, the National Theatre was strongly visible in its competition with the Swedish Theatre. The two theatres competed for the same state funding and, in the early years, for the same audience. The opposition became milder when the language disputes calmed down and the Finnishspeaking population gained a more equal status, but in bilingual independent Finland today both official languages still have their separate stages with little co-operation. When the National Theatre had to find new legitimation for its status after the speaking of Finnish on stage was no longer an important struggle, the Swedish Theatre increasingly emphasized the use of language. Its task in preserving the language was important after the domestication of the

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Swedish Theatre and especially, towards the end of the 1990s, as the Swedishspeaking population slowly and radically decreased and lost its hegemonic status. Naming the company as national therefore had special importance. The language politics of the National Theatre and the Swedish Theatre had different aims, but both wanted – not in the same years, however – to develop a special model language. In both cases these conventions were later attacked as being artificial, and the theatres had to rejuvenate their expressions in order to maintain their status. This testifies to the continuing process, operating between tradition and innovation. Today the National Theatre is still very visibly Finnish and does not use the country’s second official language, Swedish. The original division still exists, and it would have been impossible to incorporate, for example, a Swedish Lilla Teatern (‘Little Theatre’) to it, as was done in the Helsinki City Theatre. The original policy in supporting Finnish is most prominent in the National Theatre’s repertoire, in which Finnish classical and contemporary drama commands a strong position. The National Theatre has, however, joined international experiments using several languages, but the role of language in such performances was different. It was accepted in 1996 into the Union of European Theatres, which enabled educational exchange, guest directors, performance tours, and a presence at international festivals. The theatre has also participated in workshops for young directors, designers and actors, and in a multilingual and multi-cultural production of The Bacchae.17

National through repertoire Before the Finnish (National) Theatre was founded, its first director, Kaarlo Bergbom, wrote in 1872 a manifesto where he defined a repertoire for a National Theatre. Except for new Finnish drama (there were no old plays yet), he found it important to stage what was best in the world: We will also in the Finnish theatre be able to understand the enthusiasm of the English, the deep thinking of the Germans, the nice tone of the Danish and the genius of the French. Let us hear in the language that we love and that Finland understands, in scenes that are of our flesh and our spirit, how Shakespeare, with a torch of poetry, enlightens the depth that is called a human heart; how Calderon interprets the momentary nature of Earth compared to the wonders of Heaven; how Molière shows the worthlessness of bad character traits; how Schiller comforts us with the thought that grace in the actions and fates of humans never disappears.18 While the writing here shows what in Finland was considered as the canon of drama, it also tells of a small country’s need to see the National Theatre’s line

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of work as a part of a larger cultural connection, in this case the European tradition. In this way Finland legitimated its position among other nations of culture. ‘The people’s culture was appropriated to speak’ for ‘the potentiality of Finnish as a modern language of literature and civilization’, writes Pertti J. Anttonen.19 The modernity of a language could be tested through translations as well. As a matter of fact the National Theatre is still quite loyal to its original programming manifesto: new domestic, classical domestic and foreign, and the best contemporary world drama. Loren Kruger refers to the institutionalization of dramatic and performance norms, or the canonization of texts, as the progressive factor of national legitimacy.20 This was especially true in Finland: the domestic classical drama in the Finnish language has become a representation of the nation. The National Theatre and its productions have had a central role in this process. Premiering their work at the National Theatre has secured an established position for many dramatists. The National Theatre was conceived for a nation without a nation-state, although Finland’s autonomous status under the Russian empire provided administrative structures which were similar to those of an independent state government. What the nation did need to argue for in order to be recognized as a nation was history.21 For that purpose, theatre as an art form produced national images: Finnish drama, national characters, and national history. An idea of the ‘originality’ of the Finnish-speaking people gave special strength to these efforts. Aleksis Kivi, the national poet, especially illustrates the way in which the National Theatre has influenced the native canon by producing his main dramatic works regularly and following performing trends. His major works have consistently been counted among the most performed plays in the Theatre’s history. Kivi wrote his tragedy Kullervo and his comedy Heath Cobblers in the 1860s. They were then important as literature, as classical genres, the former also as an image of the mythical past. The novel Seven Brothers has also received several dramatizations and large audiences during recent decades. The latest praised interpretations of Kullervo and Heath Cobblers were staged around 2000. According to Joep Leerssen, the recognition of national characters is more important than a realistic national representation (i.e. realism), and it is mostly based on repetition.22 In theatre the recognition of what was Finnish and national was born through the repetition of representations. An interesting detail is the fact that Heath Cobblers, a comedy by the Finnish-speaking national poet, was also performed in the early programme of the domesticated Swedish Theatre as a manifesto of change, in becoming national. The later performance history of Heath Cobblers also indicates that the recognition of what is national can face a crisis, especially when the image of the nation is being reviewed, which can lead to both change in tradition and the need to legitimate national representation in a new way.23 But as Robert Alter writes, the re-legitimacy can only strengthen the canon, and I claim it also

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strengthens the national status of the performing theatre. What ‘unsettles the canon, makes us read it differently, [and] invites us to imagine its cultural role in altered terms.’24 The latest National Theatre interpretations of Aleksis Kivi’s work have reflected both the theatrical trends at the time of the performance and the different ways in which it is possible to approach national drama. The performance of Heath Cobblers renewed the comedy’s performance tradition with a meta-theatrical and playful tone, updating the fictional time by a century and strengthening the erotic tensions of the play. The time in Kullervo was moved backwards, or perhaps inwards into a ritual, as the stage world appeared archaic and the performance was governed by the mise-en-scène and not by the tragic text. Modern and Modernist canonized Finnish plays exemplify how the national assimilated and was partly connected with modernization.25 The realistic drama of the 1880s, Minna Canth’s work especially, becomes complicated if evaluated as national drama. Her role as a Finnish dramatist was important to the Finnish (National) Theatre, but her modern characters were not ‘national’ representations as Kivi’s characters were. Canth’s Ibsen-style plays were, however, soon included in the national canon and its authority was seldom questioned in Finland. In the 1880s her new, more realistic image of the people attained support from a new-Fennomanic generation, and Canth’s status was already steady when the next decades turned to the new-romantic images. The performances at the National Theatre also substituted realism for theatrical intertextualism, which softened their social radicalism.26 Maria Jotuni, who made her debut in the 1910s, was different with her social and human satire. She represented formal Modernism, which was not popular in the new independent national state, and one of her plays even raised critical discussion in the Finnish Parliament, and threatened the National Theatre’s state-aid. The plays by Jotuni tested the borders of what can be accepted as national, but they are most popular today, testifying to the need to continuously re-evaluate what is appreciated as national art. On the other hand, plays by one of today’s most appreciated Finnish dramatists, Hella Wuolijoki, were accepted late onto the National Theatre’s stage, possibly because of the writer’s leftist reputation but also because her plays were condemned to the ‘popular’ genre while literary values still dictated what was seen as theatrical art.27 The policy of producing foreign classics has followed Bergbom’s original lines, but performing foreign contemporary drama has depended more on the interests of theatre directors and sometimes also ideological trends. For example, Shakespeare and Molière have been staged more at the National Theatre than on other stages. Russian drama was not favoured during the decades between the world wars, French drama has been staged especially at the National Theatre, and Nordic drama has had a privileged status both in the early years and recent decades of the Theatre.

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After the Second World War and defeat by the Soviet Union, the National Theatre’s practices acquired special significance: favouring the new Modernism, i.e. the valuing of form over sensitive social (political) content, acting as a host to visiting productions, creating a strong internationalization, continuing the development of domestic drama, and managing a new political balance in the late 1940s with a minimum of compromises. The new arrival after two decades’ silence of Chekhov’s work and special interest in the theatre of the absurd from the West satisfied the new cultural atmosphere where Modernism in art was reaffirmed. Modernism had not fulfilled the expectations of the hegemonic pre-war nationalism, but in postwar Finland nationalist ideology was unfavourable and Modernism could work as its substitute as a Western movement. The National Theatre did not renew its strategies when new postwar trends had lost their freshness, and its status as an artistic forerunner was in danger. As the new generation favoured social discussion from the 1960s, founded new group theatres or campaigned for popular theatre, its repertoire was reliable but not very innovative. The National Theatre re-affirmed its status simultaneously with its new, smaller, stages. It has today four stages in different sizes, which make it possible to take risks and perform also radical repertoire on smaller stages, where it competes with small experimental groups. At the turn of the new millennium, the National Theatre has invested in new Finnish drama and has favoured young artists, which has reaffirmed its national status. The Theatre premiered in 2005–6 as many as twelve Finnish plays, seven of them as first productions. Many of these new plays have radical social messages. The classical repertoire was represented by William Shakespeare, Molière, Henrik Ibsen, Nikolai Jevreinov, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and today’s international trends by Martin Crimp, Moira Buffini, Michael Frayn, Ronald Schimmelpfenning, Lars Norén, Martin McDonagh and David Harrower.28 Through repertoire, the National Theatre seems to legitimate its national status by emphasizing ‘quality’, by keeping its distance from popular drama and entertainment.

Conclusions If a National Theatre is partly defined through its relationship with the ‘other’, in Finland today, the significant other is the whole Finnish theatre system where the permanent city/town theatres constitute the central element. Neither the Finnish and Swedish-speaking National Theatres, nor the National Opera differ from these in terms of public funding, although the amounts of funding from the state/city vary. Most of the city theatres are also more strongly shared in ownership than Finland’s National Theatre and the Swedish Theatre. The competition for the position of the most important theatre in the country is in fact most visible between Finland’s National Theatre and the leading

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exponent of the populist theatre tradition, the Helsinki City Theatre, which has absorbed the children’s theatre Pieni Suomi and Swedish Lilla Teatern and which reaches the largest audiences with its high-level musicals. As the Swedish-speaking population in Finland has decreased to fewer than five per cent of the population, the Swedish Theatre cannot compete in national importance with the Finnish National Theatre as it did a hundred years ago; however, its importance in representing Swedish-speakers of the whole country is generally acknowledged. The National Opera with its state support and ownership maintains an image of international importance as a flagship of Finnish high culture. In this situation the National Theatre of Finland has different strategies in legitimating its status as national: programmatic distance from the ‘commercial’, developing the domestic drama in Finnish, and networking with other European National Theatres and international representation in general. Much of this is still based on language (through repertoire) and cultural representation of the nation, but it has less political significance now than in the early years of the Finnish national movement. The Theatre keeps its status in a most essential way: through its repertoire and ability to follow theatrical trends. Its status as the first and best theatre is not clear, but its role as a national institution has not been questioned.

Notes 1. Pertti J. Anttonen (2005), p. 162: The elite needed the people, ‘since the hegemonic position of the elite was not based on land ownership, the elite depended upon the support of the “people” in order to secure not only its cultural and political hegemony but also the state and its political institutions against the assimilation of the Russian empire.’ The ‘people’ spoke mostly Finnish. See also S. E. Wilmer and Pirkko Koski (2006), pp. 46–7, 54–64. Until the 1980s the Finnish and Swedish theatre histories were written wholly separately. The concept ‘national’ was traditionally used only about the Finnish Theatre/National Theatre. 2. According to Anttonen op.cit., p. 162, inspired by the Fennomanic movement and German ideologies, the aim of the Finnish nationalists was to show the readiness of the Finnish-speaking population to become one of the cultured nations. See also Loren Kruger (1992), pp. 3–17. 3. S. E. Wilmer, ‘On Writing National Theatre Histories’, in S. E. Wilmer (2004), pp. 17–28. 4. Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä (1907), Suomalaisen teatterin historia. II (Helsinki: SKS), p. 51. 5. Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä, op.cit., pp. 350–7. 6. See Hanna Suutela (2001), pp. 85–7; Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., p. 60. 7. Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä (1910), Suomalaisen teatterin historia IV (Helsinki: SKS), pp. 147–8. 8. The archive of the National Theatre. 9. Hanna Korsberg (2004), Vallankumousta lavastamassa. Valtion Teatterikomitea 1945–1946 (Helsinki: Like).

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10. The administrative languages were Swedish, Finnish and a little Russian; the education was in Swedish and Finnish and a very little in Russian. See Pirkko Koski (1998). 11. See Liisa Byckling (2000), Aleksanterin Teatteri 120 vuotta (Helsinki: Helsingin Kaupungin Kulttuurikeskus, Aleksanterin teatteri); Koski, op.cit. 12. Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., p. 29; Suutela, op.cit., p. 81. 13. Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., pp. 31–2. 14. See Anttonen, op.cit., p. 162. 15. Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., pp. 146–7. 16. Kaarlo Bergbom (1908), Kaarlo Bergbomin kirjoitukset. II. Tutkimukset ja arvostelut. (Helsinki: SKS), p. 351. 17. Suomen Kansallisteatteri. Finnish National Theatre, ed. by Maria-Liisa Nevala and Paula Havaste. (Kansallisteatteri), p. 42. 18. Bergbom, op.cit., p. 362. 19. Anttonen, op.cit., p. 162. 20. Kruger, op.cit., p. 16. 21. Anttonen, op.cit., p. 170. 22. See Joep Leerssen (2000), p. 276; see also Anderson, op. cit., p. 4. Following Anderson, Aleksis Kivi’s play Heath Cobblers reveals the process of becoming ‘national’: national symbols/stereotypes need to be recognizable and they tend to ‘modulate’; they become ‘capable of being transplanted’, here on to the Finnish–Swedish stage. 23. Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., pp. 91–2. 24. Robert Alter (2000), pp. 19–20. 25. Anttonen, op.cit., p. 163. According to Anttonen, tradition ‘received its meaning in the context of producing modernity, in the making of modern political culture, as part of the modern discourses on society, state, class and national integration and the nature of modernity.’ 26. See Hannu Nieminen (2006), Kansa seisoi loitommalla (Tampere: Vastapaino), pp. 118–120, 191–4, 197. 27. Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., pp. 81–96. 28. See Wilmer and Koski, op.cit., p. 140; Suomen Kansallisteatteri. Vuosikertomus 2005. [The National Theatre. Annual Report 2005.] Helsinki, 2006.

9 Creating and Dismantling the National Theatre in Divided Belgium Frank Peeters

In the summer of 1830, an uprising took place in France. The French July revolution evoked much sympathy in Brussels and the Southern provinces of the Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, especially among the young, liberal people. They considered the Parisian insurgents as kindred spirits and welcomed their actions. What later would become Belgium belonged to Koninkrijk der Nederlanden at the time, ruled by Willem I. On 25 August 1830, after the opera La Muette de Portici by the French composer Daniel Auber in the Brussels Théâtre de la Monnaie, the audience, incited by the aria ‘Amour sacré de la Patrie’ started protesting loudly on the square in front of the opera house. The riot spontaneously developed into a true rising, which would eventually lead to the independence of Belgium in November 1830. After independence, the Belgian state above all was interested in establishing and propagating its own existence. And, because it was commonly accepted that besides historical paintings and parades, theatre was an excellent tool of propaganda to involve the largely illiterate population in a project of civilizing its people, the government took some initiatives which were to promote the rise of a national theatre culture. One of the first measures het Voorlopig Bewind (the provisional government) took, after it had proclaimed Belgian independence, was to declare that theatres could be established anywhere on Belgian territory with no restrictions.1 Also, in 1860, the so-called premium scheme was established, allowing for subsidizing patriotic theatre texts that carried a message of civil ethos. Attracted by relatively easy additional earnings, dozens of authors emerged – generally teachers, self-employed persons or lower-level civil servants – who, with little self-criticism, swamped Belgium with hundreds of plays. In 1872 alone, 175 pieces were premiered and more than 120 historical pieces were written between 1860 and 1890, even though only a handful really made it onto the stage. Moreover in 1858, the tri-annual state prize for drama was set up, its main aim being to reward theatrical pieces where the subject ‘must be related to national history or national manners and customs’. In spite of all this, the government still had to urge companies again and again to schedule 111

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a minimum number of works by Belgian authors, because spontaneously theatres tended much more to the favoured French, and to a lesser degree to German, romantic and melodramatic repertoire. However, concerning a National Theatre, the early Belgian state had to solve a more complicated problem. The source of the issue was the bilingual nature of its society, which at the foundation of the Belgium state was guaranteed by the constitution. This meant, at least in theory, that both Dutch and French – spoken by respectively 65 per cent and 35 per cent of the population – were allowed to be used in private and government matters and in contacts with the government. In reality, however, the young Belgium state was entirely ‘Frenchified’ and it would continue for about a century before both regional languages were treated more or less equally, not only de jure but also de facto. During the first decades after independence, the whole issue of founding a national theatre repertoire dominated the search for a seemingly impossible compromise: one theatre repertoire that at the same time represents both language communities and the Belgian state. In 1839 Englebert-Théophile Van Hecke (1809–67), a retired doctor and officer, provided an analysis of the problem in his Considérations sur le Théâtre en Belgique et sur les Difficultés et les Moyens d’y Créer une Scène Nationale (Reflections on the Belgian Theatre and on the Difficulties and Means to Create a National Stage).2 The text by Van Hecke is highly interesting because it can act as a model for the lines of thought of the French-speaking part of the Belgian population or the ‘Frenchified’ middle classes, to which the majority of theatre producers and their audiences also belonged. Because it was unthinkable for this part of society that Belgian theatre would involve spoken Dutch, which was considered unsuitable for science or art, the typical Belgian ‘couleur locale’ of the plays should see to it that this type of theatre, in spite of the fact that it was written and played in French, nevertheless would be nationalist Belgian theatre. This picturesque ‘belgitude’ was found among the ancestors: artists, soldiers and kings. More than a century later, Susan Lilar would adhere to an identical solution in her overview (1951) Zestig jaar toneelliteratuur in België (Sixty Years of Dramatic Literature in Belgium). To her a play would be a ‘Belgian’ work of art depending in the first place on its topic but also on the Flemish ‘Kulturgeist’: ‘Should one assume that Belgian theatre plays are in fact Flemish, even when they clearly are set in French, then the whole problem becomes clear …. One has to accept that the rebirth of Belgian theatre has been fed by those sources for sixty years, it drew from it gradually and it was a sign of the Flemish intellect growing, which had reached its peak – in general terms – in the period of Van Eyck to Breughel.’ The issues involved in the struggle to achieve a national Belgian theatre culture are also reflected in the unclear characteristic of a national locus for performances. No doubt, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in the capital came close to being a National Theatre in the nineteenth century, but officially

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it never carried that name. It was and remained an opera house mainly and it was not financed by the Belgian government nor by the court, but it did receive subsidies from the city council. Moreover, neither in the repertoire, nor in the performing bodies nor in the governing board was there the slightest hint of a national Belgian character: ‘The discussions in the city council often refer to the theatres in France. The Monnaie is a French theatre, because its repertoire is conceived along the same lines as the major Parisian operas. The staff, singers and technicians alike, originate very often from the French stage, or are eager to go there.’ (Van der Hoeven 2000, p.19) The mere fact that the theatre venue was the core location of the Belgian revolution granted the place a special aura, but it didn’t mean that it would have belonged in one way or the other to the young monarchy.3 Later on, both the first Belgian king, Leopold I, and his son, Leopold II, would offer personal financial support, something which also happened for the Flemish theatre in the capital, even though at a more modest level. French-speaking theatre was and still is being performed at the Théâtre du Parc, which is located in the Warandepark opposite the Belgian Parliament. Along with the Théâtre de la Monnaie, they belonged to the Théâtres Royaux de Bruxelles. Moreover, in the Théâtre du Parc, where occasional Flemish performances were held between 1850 and 1854 as well, there was hardly a sign of a national assignment: the repertoire of melodrama, vaudeville, comedy and revue did not differ from any other theatre in the capital. It was impossible to view the activities as an authentic national repertoire. Just as in the opera, French works prevailed.4 What was the situation like outside the capital? Both in the Frenchspeaking part of the country (Liège) and in the Dutch-speaking part (Antwerp and Ghent), the most prestigious theatre houses were opera houses, where – in imitation of the Théâtre de la Monnaie – plays of French and Italian origin dominated. The names Grand Théâtre (Ghent) or Théâtre Royal (Antwerp and Liège) above all were meant to act as quality labels that granted these provincial houses a metropolitan style, an international repertoire and – even in Flanders – exclusively French-speaking audiences. Here as well, one could not speak of a national Belgian project. The addition ‘Royal’ could only be allowed for by the King and obviously involved solidarity to the Belgian state, but it nevertheless had an important symbolic function for the middle classes for whom the royal family was an important symbol, being the reassuring top of civil society. Moreover, around 1840, the middle classes in Ghent were extremely suspicious of Belgian independence as their cotton and flax industry had prospered under the Dutch regime and they feared that Belgian independence would weaken their economic position on the international market. However, some Flemish theatres, with the one in Antwerp (1853) as the most important one,5 called themselves ‘national’ and even carried the name

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explicitly. The so-called National Theatre of Antwerp, which was founded as the first Flemish professional theatre in 1853, was a local initiative, expressing a patriotic feeling, but in no way one with a ‘national’ scope: it served the local Antwerp Dutch-speaking lower-middle class audience; the uppermiddle class spoke French and kept to the Théâtre Royal Français, the opera. ‘National’, simply meant ‘belonging to the Belgian nation’. As I have written elsewhere, a ‘national’ theatre in the sense that the epithet was used in Antwerp ‘meant first and foremost a theatre that produced original plays (in other words, no translations) that were morally justifiable and educational as well. Both contemporary plays, which criticized the mistakes of “modern” times, and historical dramas, which exemplified the forefathers’ and nation’s grandness, made for good “national theatre” ’.6 This approach, however, had nothing in common with a national status. Moreover, at the time the plays spoken in Dutch were performed in venues that could hardly be considered as proper theatre venues. People played in dilapidated eighteenth-century rooms, in small private theatres or in venues that had been hastily built and were temporary. Only in 1872 would the Antwerp council be the first one to establish a Flemish theatre. Brussels would follow only in 1887, and Ghent even later, in 1899. Nevertheless, the companies who played in these theatres were allowed to call themselves ‘Royal’, even though neither their status nor their fame was at a national level. The situation continued after the First World War, which means that the national government did not take any initiative to recognize its theatres as National Theatres or as such, to support them financially. However, throughout the years many attempts were formulated to establish a National Belgian Theatre, although not a single plan materialized. Beyond doubt, the presence of two linguistically non-related and competitive communities ensured that not a single politician or political party ventured upon this task and as the royal authority by constitution cannot take such an initiative, deeds did not follow words. After the Second World War, the government quite explicitly intervened in the world of theatre for the first time. By the regent’s decision of 19 September 1945, not only was a Nationaal Toneel (National Theatre) founded, but at the same time the Belgian state started to subsidize professional theatre substantially, be it French- or Dutch-speaking. The true reasons why the government suddenly showed such an interest are still unclear even sixty years later, but from documents it becomes clear that it concerned a conscious choice to restore the prestige of the nation after the difficult war years. In addition, local political strategies and interests played an equally large part in this. Up to then theatres were financially supported by their respective city councils but were granted no financial support by the national government. This changed drastically after the war and started off an unprecedented dynamic that still influences the nature of Belgian theatre.

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From the start, the Nationaal Toneel van België/Le Théâtre National de Belgique consisted of two completely separate companies: one Flemishspeaking, the other French-speaking. Moreover, the foundation of a National Theatre did not mean that two new companies had been established: two existing companies were chosen to carry out the task of ‘performing high quality theatre for the largest possible audience, improving the working conditions for the actors and stimulating the production of Belgian dramatic literature.’7 However, it was not stipulated anywhere what ‘high quality theatre’ would mean, though from the above it is clear that the underlying idea still is very much nineteenth-century in its approach to theatre as a means of educating the populace. All of this resulted in an inconsistent play list, offering a tutti-frutti repertoire, which avoided the avant-garde or overtly political plays. Theatre was still regarded as a means to educate and not as an art form in its own right. Some criteria were explicit though: the number of performances was set at 200 per year per company and at least one production had to be by a Belgian playwright. The founding fathers and managers alike regarded the Old Vic and the Young Vic (Michel Saint-Denis), le Théâtre National Populaire ( J. Vilar), the Berliner Ensemble (B. Brecht), the Comédie-Française or the Theatre Workshop (Littlewood) as possible approaches to model themselves on. Yet, they were impeded by the legal restrictions of the system and the political custody under which they had to operate. Since they had been created by the same national decree, not only was their goal and scope similar in purpose, the way they were financed was very much alike as well: both companies received an equal amount. The system of state-supported theatres gradually expanded to other companies as well, although in 1954 the KNS-Nationaal Toneel, based mainly in Antwerp, still received 77 per cent of the money destined for all Flemish theatres because of its ‘national’ mission. The other theatres protested, as they did in the Frenchspeaking part about the lavish subsidies which the Théâtre National received. After the federalization of the Belgian state, things improved since both the Flemish-and the French-speaking part were granted autonomy in cultural matters. In 2005, the amount that was spent to subsidize theatres increased enormously (25 million euros) and 37 Flemish companies received important state support. Het Toneelhuis, the major Antwerp theatre under a new name, still tops the list but its share has dropped to a more reasonable 17 per cent. Another result of the decree was the foundation of a drama school providing for the needs of the National Theatre in both parts of the country: the Studio van het Nationaal Toneel (1946), which took as a model Copeau’s Studio des Champs-Elysées, and the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle established in 1962. Both also went abroad: the French-speaking company started in 1947 and had its biggest successes in 1955 when it toured with eight plays in South America; the Flemish company, incited by the success of their French-speaking colleagues, started touring the Congo, a Belgian colony at the time, and South Africa.

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In spite of all the efforts and incentives that were taken in the nineteenth century to create a national repertoire, both sections of the National Theatre lacked a Belgian, indigenous canon from which a play could be chosen to open or highlight the season. Contrary to the experience of the Netherlands, where Vondel, the seventeenth-century national poet, provided the season’s opening play at the Royal Amsterdam Theatre for many years, no such playwright could be found in Belgium. To celebrate the hundredth birthday of the Flemish professional theatre in 1953, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed and during the first year of its existence the National Theatre in Flanders only staged two Flemish plays out of thirty-one, otherwise presenting the canon of western drama. Three years after the founding of the National Theatre, in the 1948–9 season, Flanders showed a great interest in the modern Anglo-Saxon repertoire with Miller, Wilder and Steinbeck. The French-speaking counterpart staged more francophone authors and avoided Belgian and foreign avant-garde writers,8 and this was also true of the Flemish company; in its effort to attract the largest possible audience, the theatre of the avant-garde was absent until the early 1960s. However, as in many aspects of public life in Belgium, in addition to what both communities had in common, there were major differences between the Flemish National Theatre and its French-speaking counterpart. Perhaps the most striking example would be the Théâtre National focusing entirely on Brussels, the Belgian capital, and the presence of the Nationaal Toneel in three cities: Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. In 1948–9 the KNS-Nationaal Toneel performed 300 times in Antwerp, 63 times in Ghent and 30 times in Brussels, making Antwerp the unofficial theatre centre of the Dutch-speaking region. The Théâtre National performed exclusively in Brussels, be it in different playhouses, because it had no fixed location up to 1961 and was hosted by several Brussels theatres up to then: Résidence Palace, Théâtre des Galeries, Théâtre du Parc or Théâtre Molière. In 1961, a new theatre venue was built but unlike the splendid Théâtre de la Monnaie it was a rather nondescript construction and formed part of a shopping mall. In 2000 the TNB moved into a brand new building on one of the main avenues. In Flanders, the experiment with Het Nationaal Toneel was abandoned in 1967: it had become obsolete and had lost the little meaning it had as a National Theatre. From now on the three major cities, Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels would be served by their local theatres. In Brussels, however, the Théâtre National continued and still does to the present day, but it too has become one of the many French-speaking companies in the capital with no distinguishing profile that, except for its lavish endowment, would account for its epithet. One hundred and seventy-five years of theatre history in Belgium has clearly shown that having a National Theatre such as the Comédie-Française, the Burgtheater or the Dramaten, was never feasible, despite all efforts by the government and some inspired idealists. It didn’t work at all in the

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nineteenth century, but even the abundantly supported initiatives after the Second World War were unsuccessful. In Flanders, conclusions were drawn after about twenty years (in 1967) and the Nationaal Toneel died an inglorious end. In the French-speaking community it still survives as a contradictio in terminis since it calls itself the Théâtre National de la Communauté française. The nineteenth-century nationality principle does not coincide with the concept of a French-speaking community, a consequence of a federal state reform, as a result of which Flemish and Walloons are experiencing a living apart together relationship more than ever before. Hence, the time is nigh to change the concept of ‘National Theatre’ drastically. Not only has it proved impossible to create a ‘classical’ National Theatre in its Belgian context so that it would be acceptable for both language communities, but there is so much more to Belgian society. The Belgian cities where theatre prevails changed dramatically in cultural and social composition with the considerable immigration from Turkey and the Maghreb countries during the 1960s and the later enlargement of the European Union towards Eastern Europe. Besides the indigenous Flemish and Walloons there are tens of thousands of Belgians who until recently were completely left outside Belgian theatre: neither theatre producers nor the audiences took on this group of new Belgians. To the extent that the nation is the people, theatre can only call itself truly national if its doors are wide open to all Belgians, new and old, whether or not they speak Dutch, French, Moroccan, Turkish, Arabic or any of the other dozens of languages spoken at present in European capitals. The Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels is the only Belgian theatre that has understood this and heads for the twenty-first century without hesitation. Even though it does not carry the official title, it is the only theatre that can call itself the theatre of and for all Belgians. It is the only major theatre to co-produce on a regular basis with the Théâtre National (such as Toernee General, September 2006), it invites ‘new’ Belgian directors of Moroccan origin to present their work (Djurdjurassique Bled, November 2006), and it reflects upon the special position of Brussels as ‘European Capital’ in EUtopia, a production in the European quarter of the city with stories from the old, the new and the future member-states. A quote from their mission statement seems an adequate note on which to conclude and a suitable honour for these enlightened theatre producers, these ‘other nationalists’: ‘In Brussels today, many communities live together and dozens of languages are spoken; at the same time Brussels is the capital of Flanders, Belgium and Europe; in Brussels poor and rich people live side by side. How is this diversity being converted on all possible levels into a contemporary, diverse and widely artistic project? […] At the KVS, Brussels is considered as an urban and intercultural experiment which benefits the whole of Flanders. In the KVS, the vital question remains as to which

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gaps of major importance the traditional repertoire leaves behind. Next to Flemish audiences, the KVS also would like to offer opportunities to people from other communities in Brussels to identify themselves with this city theatre.’9

Notes 1. Decret du 21 octobre 1830. ‘Art. 1. Toute personne pourra élever un théâtre public et y faire représenter des pièces de tous les genres […].’ 2. For a fuller discussion of this, see Frank Peeters in S. Wilmer (ed.), (2004), pp.88–105. 3. On the contrary, as Roland Van der Hoeven wrote (2000) in Le Théâtre de la Monnaie au XIXe siècle (Bruxelles: Université libre de Bruxelles), p.12: ‘Il était […] impensable dans les années 1831–1832 de remettre les destinées du premier théâtre de Belgique entre les mains du nouveau monarque [. . .].’ 4. According to Lionel Renieu (1928) in his Histoire des théâtres de Bruxelles, depuis leur origine jusqu’à ce jour (Paris: Ducharte & Van Buggenhout), p.930: ‘On y jouait le répertoire du Gymnase, des Variétés et du Vaudeville de Paris.’ 5. Others were the Nationael Tooneel van Oost-Vlaanderen (1865) and the Nationael Tooneel van West-Vlaanderen (1861–1862). Both existed for hardly more than one season. 6. Frank Peeters in S. Wilmer (ed.) (2004), p.91. 7. Paul Aron (1995), La mémoire en jeu: une histoire du théâtre de langue française en Belgique (XIXe – XXe siècle) (Bruxelles: Théâtre Nationale de Belgique), p.184. 8. Paul Aron argued (1995, p.198), ‘Marqué par le souci de conquérir un public peu préparé aux innovations, il évite soigneusement les oeuvres de l’avant-garde étrangère comme celles des dramaturges belges.’ 9. http://www.kvs.be/index2.php?page=overdekvs_missionstatement (the Dutchlanguage mission statement).

III Governmental and Ideological Control

10 National on Compulsion: The Moscow Art Theatre Laurence Senelick

Some theatres are born national; some achieve nationality; and some have nationality thrust upon them. The Moscow Art Theatre falls under this last category. Its situation is anomalous. Although it was not founded as a National Theatre, circumstances conspired to turn it into one. Before the Revolution, its high ideals and flair for experimentation gave it an extraordinary profile, but within Russia it was viewed chiefly as one of the better private theatres, at best primus inter pares. Outside Russia, it was barely heard of. Articles on Russian theatre which appeared in the Western press mentioned it briefly, if at all.1 Its pre-eminence within the Soviet Union came late; and when it came, it was unwanted. This was a case in which turning into a National Theatre entailed a number of unfortunate, even dire circumstances which vitiated the theatre’s creative inspiration. The foundation of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 can be seen as the culmination of reforming tendencies present in the Russian theatre from the middle of the eighteenth century. Its principles had been enunciated sixty years earlier by the actor Mikhail Shchepkin. There was the same emphasis on the stage as a rostrum from which to educate the public; the insistence on discipline, devotion and intelligence in the actor’s work; dedication to high ideals of art and literature, especially Russian art and literature; and unity of ensemble, directing and design in the mise-en-scène. The concerns set forth at the All-Russian Congress of Stage Workers in 1897 – the mission of the actor as a harbinger of progress, the dignity of every member of a team, and the need to make theatre available to the poor and disenfranchised – were also contributing factors. The same year that the Art Theatre opened its doors, the New (Novy) Theatre, a filial of the Imperial Theatres, arose in St Petersburg as an arena for younger performers, and Diaghilev and Benois launched the World of Art movement. The Art Theatre’s founders, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, originally aimed at low-income groups: students, professionals of moderate means, workers with aspirations to culture. The repertory planned was highly ambitious, ranging from ancient Greek tragedy 120

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to the latest Russian problem play. The founders requested a subsidy from the Moscow Duma or City Council, setting out their goals in a public report. This stipulated that the theatre’s first task was its accessibility to allow the poorer class of educated persons to get decent seats at low prices; its second task was to instil a new spirit in Russian stage art by eliminating routine and claptrap; and its third task was pedagogical, to train and develop younger talents.2 With this in mind, they baptized their project with the cumbersome name Moskovsky Khudozhestvenny i Obshchedostupny Teatr. Each element is significant. It is Moskovsky or ‘Muscovite’, because they hoped to receive a subsidy from the municipal authorities. The other two words were trendy: khudozhestvenoe, ‘artistic’,was something of an neologism, defined in Dahl’s great dictionary of 1880, as ‘iskusnoe, masterskoe, izyashchnoe’ (‘skilful, well-wrought, elegant’). Obshchedostupnoe, as in obshchedostupnoe zrelishche, which literally translates as ‘accessible spectacle’, appears in Dahl as a synonym for deshyovoe, skhodnoe (‘cheap, inexpensive’).3 In other words, the title its founders bestowed on their enterprise might be translated as the Moscow Aesthetic Theatre at Popular Prices. Even at this phase, the concept was an oxymoron. When the Duma failed to respond (the answer that finally came in 1899 was No), Stanislavsky followed the first rule of theatre: never invest your own money. Rather than subsidize a private theatre out of his pocket, he supported the idea of a joint stock company. His acquaintance, the banker and industrialist Savva Morozov, offered a donation of ten thousand rubles with the understanding that he would remain the theatre’s sole donor and principal stockholder. Despite Nemirovich’s misgivings, his offer was accepted. As a result, to avoid a deficit, admission prices had to be higher than originally intended.4 Although in his address to the company at the first rehearsal, Stanislavsky reiterated the goal of ‘bringing enlightenment into the lives of the poor’ with a ‘thoughtful, high-minded, popular theatre’,5 the founders soon became aware that higher prices, combined with government restrictions, would limit their appeal to a popular audience. Instead, their first public was and would remain the educated middle- and professional classes. Morozov’s patronage also kept the theatre in the sphere of the self-made capitalists. Within the theatre itself, the institution was held to be a Temple of Art with a capital A, whose ideals were never to be sullied by a need for box-office success or a quest for popularity. Over time these admirable goals would be compromised by circumstance. The Art Theatre did not greet the Revolution with wholehearted enthusiasm, and vice-versa.6 In December 1917, when the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies organized free performances for workers, the MAT’s shareholders protested.7 Although Stanislavsky clung to an apolitical platform, concentrated on aesthetics, several members of the company were arrested in 1917 and 1918, and he himself was interrogated by the Cheka.

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All Russian theatres were nationalized in December 1919, which meant that the MAT could not remain out of step with government policy and survive. With its outdated repertory and association with a bourgeois intelligentsia, it came under fierce attack, not least from its former member, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was now the head of the Theatre Section of Narkompros, the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. In speeches and articles, Meyerhold vehemently mocked the Art Theatre’s obsolescence and insisted that Theatrical October, as he termed it, had to start from point zero, with the elimination of all pre-Revolutionary theatre companies. In article after article he characterized the Art Theatre audience as ‘remnants of the bourgeoisie who were too late to board ships headed for Constantinople’,8 and invidiously praised Stanislavsky’s genius for pure theatricality, while regretting that it was wasted within ‘the literary bourgeois management of the Art Theatre.’9 Meyerhold’s radical schemes found no sympathetic response among the Bolshevik leadership, however, least of all with Anatoly Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, himself a double-dyed intellectual and friend of Nemirovich. He declared: ‘it would, of course, be ridiculous to hand over to [Theatrical October] the treasures which were preserved not without great pains during the gigantic tempest in the real October [1917] … I can entrust Comrade Meyerhold with the destruction of what is old and bad and with the creation of what is new and good, but I cannot entrust him with preserving whatever is old and good.’10 In 1920, Lunacharsky put the former Imperial Theatres as well as the MAT under his own protection by designating them ‘academic theatres.’11 The journal Teatr, founded as an organ of the academic theatre, spelled out its duty in the first issue. This was to be ‘the BEST THEATRE in modern times’. It was to eschew both the preservationist traditions of the museum theatre and the experimental search for a new repertory and styles of acting. Nor was it to be a utopian synthesis of old and new, but a seeker for the ‘constant growth and organic renewal of the theatre’ through ‘the compilation and involvement in the work of the theatre of everything significant that is created by the era, whatever seems most indisputable, integral and consummate, in its mastery.’12 This worthy, if nebulous, goal was a tall order. It implies a classical repertory with recharged versions of the best acting and directing approaches of the past. How this was to be achieved was left up to the hapless management of the theatres themselves. Not without interference, however. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich quickly fell foul of the governmental agencies charged with overseeing the theatres. With part of the company stranded in Europe as a result of the Civil War and much of the rest of it, including Stanislavsky, touring in the United States, Nemirovich found himself at loggerheads with the Glavrepertkom, another of those acronymic agencies to which he had to report, this one in charge of selecting plays. To his secretary in the States, he wrote: ‘… we’re at war with the Glavrepertkom … which wants to impose on the theatre a censorship

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such as never before … It won’t license a play whenever it finds it counterrevolutionary, and whenever it finds it insufficiently Soviet, and whenever the play has a king (The Snowmaiden) or tsarist officials (The Voivode), and whenever there is a beautiful past or church (A Nest of Gentry), and whenever anything in general bothers it, the Glavrepertkom, and whenever it is useful to show off its power.’13 The American tour itself brought down the wrath of the Party media when Stanislavsky carelessly appeared in a news photograph with Prince Feliks Yusupov, the decadent aristo who had assassinated Rasputin.14 As the MAT approached its twenty-fifth anniversary, Lunacharsky’s Sovnarkom granted four million rubles to the development of the theatre, at the same time that it and such other agencies as Glavnauka and the Administration of Academic Theatres demanded more oversight and detailed reports.15 Moreover, the theatre was still mightily out of favour with the powers that be. Trotsky characterized its members as ‘insulars’, who ‘consider everything going on around them as hostile, or, at any rate, strange.’ He deplored their irrelevant repertory of Chekhov and nineteenth-century operetta, ‘disclosing to the blasé European and the all-paying American how beautiful was the cherry orchard of old feudal Russia, and how subtle and languid were its theatres.’16 Words such as ‘moribund’ and ‘inertia’ began regularly to accompany mentions of the MAT in the press. The individual reaction of its leaders to this plight could not have been more different. Nemirovich, who, to all intents and purposes, managed the daily life of the theatre, engaged with the authorities, arguing, pleading, cajoling, even trying to reverse arrests. After spending a year in Hollywood, he was eager to invigorate the repertory, not with clumsy Soviet hackwork, but with Western innovations. In his Musical Studio he put on Ernst Krenek’s jazz opera Jonny Spielt Auf with considerable success, and staged Watkins’s comic melodrama Roxy Hart (better known in its musical adaptation Chicago) as Reklam (Publicity) in 1930. (Attempts to mount Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and a dramatization of Dreiser’s American Tragedy came to naught.) Even so, Nemirovich spent long periods abroad, pondering whether or not to become an émigré. Stanislavsky, on the other hand, did become what Inna Soloviova has called ‘an internal émigré’17 . Alienated from Bolshevik culture, terrified and confused by the need to placate the government, he gradually withdrew from the daily life of theatre, pleading ill health. After directing a few new productions at the Art Theatre which signalled a renewed vigour and interest in theatricality (The Marriage of Figaro; The Ardent Heart), he made his home in Leontyev Lane his haven, holding rehearsals in its ballroom. Études with actors and singers replaced the running of an active theatre and its studios. In his last years he was totally isolated, partly for medical, partly for politial reasons. Unlike artists of similar or greater stature, such as Osip Mandelshtam, Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, Stanislavsky offered little

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resistance to the Stalinist attack on the arts, and even supported it in his letters. Without his direct consent, but also without his opposition, a form of ‘Stanislavskism’ took shape which abetted social realism and anti-formalism. At the Stanislavsky colloquium at the Théâtre de Chaillot in 1988, the then artistic director of the MAT, Oleg Efremov, stated that his generation could not forgive Stanislavsky for staying in the USSR during the 1930s. The state’s grip on the theatre tightened in 1925 with the establishment of its own so-called Repertory Board packed with young Communists, which, in the words of Aleksandr Popov, quickly ‘degenerated into a controlling and infiltrating ideological force, pretending to be a “democratic institution representing the majority”’.18 Next came an Artistic Council, and then a mestkom or trade union committee, its leaders nominated by the Party, which could call meetings of the collective on political matters. At the MAT its chairman was a stagehand, later a major figure on the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Art Workers which held the mandate to resolve serious creative questions. And, of course, there was a Communist Party committee. These committees inserted layers of time-consuming red-tape and nonartistic considerations between every proposal and its resolution.19 Matters came to a head in 1926 over the production of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Days of the Turbins. Eager to appease the clamour for a Soviet repertory, the Art Theatre had made some ill-advised decisions in choosing plays. They thought they had a winner when they commissioned the Ukrainian author to dramatize his novel The White Guard, a study of the effects of the Civil War on one family. Devoid of any Communist characters in blue or black tunics, it fitted the MAT’s taste for domestic drama and for historical spectacle. When it was initially submitted to the board of censors, only one of them took notice of it and returned it, recommending a few modifications. Then months later, the requested changes having been made, the play was finally performed for the censors, and banned. Lunacharsky was outraged by this volte-face, and at a meeting on theatrical issues called by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, he railed at the Council: You licensed it. And when the theatre had spent thousands on it, and the actors had worked into their roles, you decided to take off the play which had got this far thanks to your … collusion! What could we say? That our Repertory Committee … allowed The Days of the Turbins up until the dress rehearsal and did not stop it before there had been enormous expenditures? The morale of the theatre would have suffered a blow which would have had worldwide significance. Could we have said that, despite all this, we were forced to correct the error of the Repertory Committee in regard to the state and the theatre? … The People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment debated it and decided that, under these circumstances, The Days of the Turbins must be allowed?20

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In despair, Stanislavsky wrote to Stalin that he was ruined, because the theatre’s capital was tied up in the play. Stalin decided that the play was not dangerous. When it opened, however, it was excoriated by the far left for its sympathetic portrayal of the Whites, and leading the charge was the theatre’s own Artistic Council. Eventually, the play was removed from the bills. Stripped of its one Soviet effort, when the MAT toured to Leningrad workers’ halls that year, it had recourse to such twenty-year-old productions as Uncle Vanya and Hamsun’s quasi-symbolist At the Gates of the Kingdom. The critics were merciless, disdaining plays ‘so far from the whole ideology of our day and so removed to the sad page of Russian reality, to the leaden life of spiritual vegetation of the country, to the unendurable atmosphere of stagnation … completely foreign to the modern spectator.’21 ‘In an epoch of titanic construction such petrified inertia of the theatre, congealed as it were on the heights of artistic achievement, is not only incomprehensible, but can hardly be justified by the history of the theatre … The theatre’s ignorance of contemporaneity makes it a theatre of a bygone era, removed from modern life.’22 Such condemnation in the pages of an officially-condoned journal for the proletariat had its effect. When the MAT celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on 27 October 1928, the premier of the Soviet government Mikhail Kalinin exhorted it ‘to walk hand in hand with the working class . . . in the struggle to create a new human being.’23 Stanislavsky, however, befuddled by the socialist pomp of the occasion, made a speech about Morozov, the selfmade millionaire who had floated the Art Theatre in 1898, a blunder which provoked denunciations in the press and sent him to bed with a heart attack. Given the growing uniformity of artistic policy, it was highly likely that the Art Theatre would be utterly transformed, if not liquidated. Despite Gorky’s support, Bulgakov’s new play Flight led to fresh attacks on the MAT’s sympathies and was prevented from opening in late 1927. Lunacharsky, who had allowed the theatre a meed of independence, was removed from office, and, in September 1929 a young bureaucrat, Mikhail Geyts, took up the political and administrative duties of the Art Theatre, posting a banner, ‘We shall transform the entire Komsomol into shock brigades in order to fulfil the Five-Year Plan.’24 The first Five-Year Plan called for every collective to sponsor some industrial organization, so the illustrious Art Theatre wound up as big brother to the Moscow Ball Bearings Factory. In his letters Nemirovich complained regularly of the constant meetings and calls for efficiency, in lieu of the leisurely pace of earlier days. Art, he insisted, could not be incubated on a Stakhanovite schedule. Two elements served to save the Art Theatre at this juncture: a successful production of a Soviet play, and Stalin himself. Armoured Train 14-69 by Vsevolod Ivanov, staged in 1927 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Soviet regime, was the first MAT creation on a revolutionary theme, albeit the hackneyed one of the Civil War. It marked the beginning of the sovietization of the theatre’s artistic practices. Its political line was deemed correct, because,

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in a typically schematic fashion, workers and peasant partisans were shown teamed up to fight the Whites who were characterized as drunks, sadists and fools. Critics and audiences thrilled to the scene in which, on a church roof, the partisan Vaska Okorok propagandizes a captured American soldier, neither knowing the other’s language. It was the first mention of Lenin’s name on the Soviet stage. Okorok (suddenly waves his arms happily, beckons the American towards him, and yells right in his face): Hey, you, fellow! … Listen … Le-nin … Lenin … American: Lenin … Hurrah! Okorok (strikes his chest). Us, you bum, we’re the Soviet republic. American: Republic … Hurrah! (Okorok brings an icon of Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac out of the church.) Okorok. Listen. This guy here, with the knife – he’s a bourgeois. And this one here, this young fellow on his back tied to the logs – that’s the proletariat. Savvy? Proletariat … American. Proletariat? I worker in Detroit auto plant. Worker … me … worker … automobile! […] Down with imperialism.25 In rehearsals, the actor had shouted out Lenin’s name, but Stanislavsky insisted that it be uttered almost in a whisper ‘as the most treasured, most precious, most important thing in life … for you must put into speaking the word Lenin your soul, your love for humanity and your country’.26 Similarly, Nikolay Khmelyov, who played the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee Peklevanov, avoided the standard stereotype of the ‘party member’. He eschewed declamation for unpretentious, low-voiced utterance; although gregrarious, perspicacious and gentle, the character was also shown to be near-sighted and eccentric. This struck the audience as more convincing than traditionally emphatic theatrical heroism.27 It led the Communist Party to view the Art Theatre’s form of psychological realism as the most appealing and efficacious style of acting. Stalin had taken an early interest in the MAT as his personal chattel, forbidding or allowing actors to travel abroad, intervening directly in the choice of plays and by this time giving the green light to productions and attending the theatre to verify the correctness of the ideological line. After the opening of the propaganda piece Platon Krechet, Stalin personally raised the salary of an actor he liked. A phone call from him in 1928 caused Days of the Turbins to be dusted off after three years’ condemnation. It was back on stage in four days, approved for production only at the MAT. The Great Leader would visit it ten times over the next decade. He also approved the ostracized Bulgakov’s appointment as dramaturge and literary advisor to the MAT. As he consolidated his power, Stalin needed a National Theatre, and had three clear choices. Meyerhold’s theatre was too radical and experimental, and lacked a

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government box. The Maly was too old-fashioned and conventional. The Art Theatre, however, as Armoured Train demonstrated, could be moulded into a suitable showcase for socialist drama and the Communist leadership. At this period, Stalin was beginning to eliminate the old Bolsheviks and remnants of the far left. The cultural life of the USSR. was becoming centralized. Geyts was dismissed on Stalin’s order, and in December 1931 the MAT was attached directly to the Central Executive Committee (TSIK) and the following month given the name Gorky Academic Art Theatre, although it had not staged a play by Gorky for nearly thirty years. This renaming was meant to bind the theatre to ‘Gorkian principles’, even as the Committee’s Secretary assured Stanislavsky that the Art Theatre was ‘the basis of the theatrical culture in the USSR.’28 Over the next five years, the Art Theatre put on four works of Gorky, an author who had quarrelled bitterly with it and its principles prior to the Revolution. In the early 1930s, the Art Theatre’s attempts to live up to Stalin’s expectations met with unequal success. A table of ranks had been set up to entice actors to strive for prominent positions in the Party: the Order of the Red Labour Banner, the Order of Lenin, the Hero of Labour, Honoured Arts of the RSFSR, Honoured Worker in Art, People’s Artist of the USSR, Laureate of the Stalin Prize, among others. They came attached with privileges: money, free transport and health care, vacations at exclusive resorts, cheap apartments, no censorship of concert appearances, etc. The more positive heroes one played, the more likely one was to receive an award. The Art Theatre, with its ageing stars and paucity of Soviet plays, was in no position to compete. When it took on Fear, Afinogenov’s play about a scientist losing his distrust of Communism and joining the movement, the MAT’s Party nucleus approached Stanislavsky to redo the weak staging, but the more he worked on it, the more its anti-Soviet elements came to fore. When the powerful actor Leonidov recited Professor Borodin’s report, ‘The peasant fears enforced collectivization, the intelligentsia the accusation of wrecking, the Party member the eternal purges, and so on,’ the repertory committee was aghast. Rapid changes were made in casting, the more outrageous lines were cut, and the scene in which Borodin confesses his mistakes fortified. The theatre also made a mess of Platon Krechet, although it redeemed itself with Enemies, Gorky’s tendentious play of factory owners vs employees. Since half the characters are pre-Revolutionary bourgeoisie, it enabled the Art Theatre veterans to shine, interesting the audience more in them than in the ‘conscientious workers’.29 In April 1932 the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party adopted the resolution, ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations’, which marked the official end of radical experimentation in the arts. Art had to be national in form, socialist in subject matter. As a result, RAPP, the association of proletarian artists, was liquidated, throwing a greater onus on the MAT to provide a creative inspiration for the workers.

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In February 1933, the Soviet government opened a contest for best play. Out of the 1,200 plays submitted, the judges, who included Meyerhold and Aleksey Tolstoy, awarded no first prize, on the grounds that ‘Soviet drama is still behind the enormous demands made upon it by our great epoch. Soviet playwrights are fighting for quality, ridding themselves of schematicism and over-simplification, gradually mastering the moulding of live artistic characters.’ The second prize was split between two plays, one of them The Wonderful Alloy by Vladimir Kirshon, ‘a gay, buoyant comedy of Soviet youth, of the life and struggle of the Young Communist League in Socialist construction’.30 For its premiere production, it was turned over to the MAT, at a time when both Stanislavsky and Nemirovich were on leave and had no say in the decision. On his return, Nemirovich had no choice but to stage this feeble farce about junior scientists experimenting with metal. At a time when Meyerhold was doing some of his best work on Russian classics, the Art Theatre was relegated to corny gags and slapstick situations, one of them involving the loss of a pair of trousers. The play turned out to be a runaway hit, however, and played for two seasons. Stella Adler saw it and was bewildered by the rapturous reception for such a weak piece.31 In 1936 Stalin declared that Trenyov’s Lyubov Yarovaya, which, a decade earlier, had been the Maly’s first successful attempt at a Soviet drama, had attained classic status, and should be played throughout the Soviet Union. This meant that it had to enter the repertory of the Art Theatre. Stanislavsky objected that this comedy-melodrama about the White emigration was out of keeping, and after half a year’s work under Sudakov, blamed the director for being unable to infuse the script with life. Nemirovich, who detested the play, now claimed to recognize its sublime ‘social demands’, and undertook the staging. It opened in December 1936 to unanimously bad reviews, which damned the production as ‘boring, weak and unconvincing’.32 The blame was laid squarely on the Art Theatre’s longwinded rehearsal process, Nemirovich’s pedantic critiques and Stanislavsky’s acting system. What had been theatrical when played in the comic grotesque style of the 1920s became arid when reinterpreted as psychological realism. It was at this point, following Stalin’s speech on professional cadres, the closing of the Second Moscow Art Theatre, and the banning of Bulgakov’s Molière play The Conspiracy of Bigots, after it had opened successfully in 1937, that an attempt was made to force Stanislavsky and Nemirovich out of the leadership of the parent company. They were stripped of their functions, which were invested in Mikhail Arkadyev, whose advent was trumpeted by Pravda as a red letter day in the history of the Art Theatre.33 In January 1936, the campaign against so-called ‘formalism’ was launched, and the Committee for Artistic Affairs, newly founded to make sure that all theatrical offerings toed the Party line, saw a value in retaining these illustrious figureheads. The theatre was turned into a machine for mass-producing propaganda. However, as plays became more schematic, the theatre’s artistic leadership failed to find

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a way to make them work. In 1936 it agonized over Korneychuk’s The Banker (1936), which, after 173 rehearsals, was not licensed for performance. The director Yury Lyubimov, then a student at the Second Art Theatre school, recalled the kind of work common at this period, Nikolay Pogodin’s Man with a Gun, first produced the following year. This was such a tinsel, Christmas-tree, New-Year’s-greeting-card happy story: a soldier from the front meets Lenin. It all followed the standard formula: there was the soldier from the front, a peasant, there was a proper worker, who was for some reason leading this soldier. There was Smolny, as the headquarters of the Revolution, Lenin. Later an order was given to put Stalin in it. Later at the MAT they staged a similar play, and it had begun as a movie … There is a genealogy of Leninoids and Stalinoids. A saga for the Soviet people. There was a whole series of plays, tableaux from life – Lenin – Stalin. And whole discussions went on: how to stage Lenin and Stalin. And even so they put Lenin just a bit higher … If there were two steps: who should stand higher. Later a whole commission had to approve a production, and already they were deciding: “No, let’s put them on an even keel. You musn’t put Lenin higher. After all Stalin is the Lenin of today, let them be side by side.”34 Articles in Pravda in support of realistic art encouraged the personnel of the MAT in these endeavours, hoping to inspire them with conviction in the theatre-to-come, firmly established on the road to socialist realism. In response, Stanislavsky publicly endorsed the new policy: ‘In a certain article in Pravda, the people, through the lips of its government, clearly, definitely and powerfully has spoken its mind about the art which it considers useful and necessary for our era. The name of this art is “socialist realism”, to which now with all firmness and conviction our theatre will strive.’35 In its now-secure status, the Art Theatre enjoyed one of its biggest successes, not Soviet claptrap, but Nemirovich’s 1937 dramatization of Anna Karenina. Ironically, this came in part because the audiences flocked to view the props and set pieces, costumes and uniforms, crowd scenes and special effects, vestiges of a bygone Tsarist era. The actors were taught manners and deportment by Prince Volkonsky, a former court factotum. Alla Tarasova, who played Anna, was awarded the Stalin Prize and made a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, even though her first husband had been a White Guard. The theatre received the Order of Lenin that May and the next summer Stalin attended the Art Theatre accompanied by Lavrenty Beria, now the feared first deputy of the Narkom for Internal Affairs, alias the secret police. These actions showed that Beria had no intention of purging the theatre, because it was Stalin’s personal place of amusement. The Great Leader and Thinker declared that the MAT and its version of socialist realism were the

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benchmark against which all other theatres would be judged. In thanks, on its fortieth anniversary, the theatre sent a celebratory letter to the General Secretary: Dear Iosif Vissarionovich! The workers of the Moscow Art Theatre, gathered today after the summer vacation and beginning its 41st season, in all its profundity recognize the responsibility and wide-ranging tasks that stand before Soviet art. Our ideas involuntarily turn to You, to the man who inspires us in our work, in overcoming any difficulties, in audacity in creative experiments. We promise you to apply all our might, to expand our creativity even further and with each of our productions offer an answer to the inquiries of our spectator …. And on the first day of our work, cheerfully, fully rested, gladly gathered again within the walls of our beloved theatre, we send our heartfelt, grateful greetings to the man who confidently leads us towards communism, the friend of art – You, Iosif Vissarionovich.36 This letter was written at a time when, as one commentator, puts it, ‘A blanket of total terror hung over the theatres, constant fear shackled the creativity of the playwrights, directors, actors.’37 This was the period of the great show trials and purges, the late-night knock at the door that could mean arrest and exile. Even though the Art Theatre enjoyed Stalin’s protection, the NKVD files on its members swelled from day to day. In its position as the flagship of theatrical Russia, the Art Theatre was compelled to set its bearings according to the general line. This prescribed the glorification of the Leader, his Party and his organs of punishment and persecution. The house newsletter heralded and endorsed the latest changes in policy. The staff became expert at truckling to authority. Appraising Nikolay Virta’s play Earth, the assistant director Medynsky noted that the author ought to show not simply enemies, but the struggle with the enemies and the role of the Party and the secret police, an opinion seconded by the veteran actor Leonidov: When I received from management the order to work on this play, I thought: was it worthwhile right now to re-open this stinking cesspool. But reading the words of Stalin: ‘To remember and never to forget, that so long as we are surrounded by capitalists, there will be wreckers, saboteurs, spies, terrorists, to remember and to carry on the fight against those comrades who underestimate the strength and significance of the acts of sabotage …’ I understand this to be the eternal, constant theme.38 This from the man who created the role of Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard and made his reputation as Dmitry Karamazov! On those who stooped so low, privileges were poured, but with provisos. A selection of the company was allowed to tour to Paris in 1937, with their spouses. Stalin picked the programme, but Arkadyev had selected the cast

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without consulting him and so was shot. Each actor chosen had to leave one close relative in Moscow, and each was assigned a ‘political study leader’, who accompanied them to private meetings. It was officially forbidden to consort with émigrés, and when they were handed anti-Soviet pamphlets, the terrified actors tore them up. They were taken on tours to see how the proletariat lives under capitalism and allowed to read only Soviet newspapers. Art Theatre actors were expected to serve as citizen-artists, which meant they had to endorse government decisions. Leonidov and Khmelyov were active members of the Moscow City Council. In 1937, the leading actor Ivan Moskvin was elected deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; Meyerhold’s step-daughter complained bitterly that it was Moskvin who phoned her grandfather to tell him that he could not bury his murdered daughter Zinaida Raikh and that they were being evicted from their apartment ‘lawfully’. Moskvin was not a monster, but suffered from the same terror as others.39 In the theatre itself, the government boxes in the auditorium were reconstructed of reinforced concrete and set up so that the audience could not see if they were occupied or not. The boxes were entered through a special corridor, with a door on to a courtyard where no one was allowed, providing total isolation from the public and the backstage area. The company knew of Stalin’s imminent arrival, however, when all the telephones were cut off, strangers began to prowl the corridors and scowling women with revolvers in their handbags took root in the ladies’ restrooms. The house manager, F. N. Mikhalsky, had to make sure he did not seat political rivals in the same box or an important figure who had fallen out of favour near one on his way up. Fortunately, Mikhalsky kept well informed, and in one case gave an influential general a pass for a bad seat, because he knew the general was soon to be blacklisted as an ‘enemy of the people’. Under these conditions, many actors and administrators died in their prime of overwork and stress. Khmelyov keeled over during a rehearsal in 1945, and four years later Boris Dobronravov expired in the wings while playing Tsar Feodor. A few had the courage to protest. Klavdiya Elanskaya called the theatre ‘a house of the dead’ and was not punished, but other actors did disappear. Even the courtly Nemirovich fell into line, and in October 1938 wrote to Stalin to reward him for his service to the Art Theatre with the ‘Order of the Seagull’. The letter was addressed to ‘Dear, beloved Iosif Vissarionovich!’, and, after referring to the Great Leader’s ‘inspiring advice and concern for the theatre’, was signed, ‘Deeply devoted’.40 Nemirovich knew that he was being a hypocrite, and privately complained of running up against the obtuseness of actors, authors and directors. In 1940, while working on his renovation of Three Sisters, he was irritated by an article written by the theatre’s dramaturge, Pavel Markov, who had said that ‘… internally the theatre is seething with indefatigable, passionately serious work…these productions were given an immense goal, towards which the

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collective of the theatre is striving.’ To his confidante and secretary Olga Bokshanskaya, Nemirovich commented, ‘I think that it would have been very useful to me to learn from Pavel Aleksandrovich, in which productions or at which rehearsals or at least in which conversations he noticed this “passionate, seething work” of the theatre’s “collective”?’41 Yet, writing to the editors of a Communist magazine, he thanked them for the article, stating that the new staging succeeded ‘in testifying to the profound success of our art after years of Soviet governance … The letters of the Komsomol Committee and the Partbyuro … have enormous significance; if the production hadn’t been accepted by the youth or had not been acknowledged as socially contemporary, I would have considered it a hopeless failure.’42 This kind of double-talk had become second nature to homo sovieticus. As for Stanislavsky, he was trotted out on ceremonial occasions as a venerable totem. However, despite the Theatre’s favoured status, the censorship did not allow him to publish his writings on ‘the system’, because its questions about ‘the spiritual experience of man’ and the ‘soul’ ran counter to dialectical materialism, an approved doctrine which brooked no contradiction.43 Stanislavsky offered to replace ‘soul’ with ‘the higher nervous activity of man’, but that was equally inadmissible. Illogically, even though the government prevented publication of the system of the MAT’s greatest figure, it closed all other avenues of thought and style in theatres throughout the USSR and forced them to conform to the Art Theatre model. Once Stanislavsky and the other old-timers died, there was no one who knew the truth about his teachings, except for a few of his students who dared not expound it. In the schools it was reinterpreted in alignment with socialist realism, which permitted only standardized ‘realistic’ productions. After the Second World War, the Art Theatre became totally fossilized, its repertory confined to plays which had won the Stalin Prize. The acting company was bloated to 120 members, many of them seldom appearing on stage. The forced MATization of other theatres made it odious to the profession. After Stalin’s death in 1953, feeble attempts were made to resuscitate the corpse. The administration tried to infuse new life by staging foreign playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Pavel Kohout, and younger Soviet authors such as Samuil Alyoshin and Leonid Zorin, but it was eclipsed by other Russian theatres. The theatrical centre of gravity shifted to the youthful collective, the Sovremennik or Contemporary, headed by Oleg Efremov, and to the Bolshoy Dramatic Theatre in Leningrad, where the influential Georgy Tovstonogov knew how to steer a careful path between exciting innovation and mollification of the authorities. Meanwhile, the fiction that the MAT was the national theatre was perpetuated. The less relevant it became to the artistic life of the nation, the more loudly it was touted as the greatest of Russian theatres. Historians reinterpreted its confusion in the 1920s as a noble fight against formalism and its stumbling in the 1930s as a mature ‘virilization’.44 A collection of documents entitled The Moscow Art Theatre in the Soviet Era,

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published in 1962, rewrote the past, stating in its preface that this outstanding national artistic treasure had been ‘saved from destruction by the October Revolution … It required the perspicacity of Lenin, a wise party politician in the realm of culture, so that, once the Art Theatre was preserved as an outstanding creation of the cultural past, it was gradually initiated into active participation in the struggle for a socialist future.’45 A second edition of this book appeared in 1972, for the seventy-fifth jubilee of the theatre.46 Now, following the Khrushchev Thaw and a change in regime, the more egregiously Stalinist material was eliminated and replaced with international praise. A new preface alluded to Lenin as a fond spectator, but not as the MAT’s muse. A more candid account of the theatre’s attitudes and vicissitudes throughout the Soviet period characterized it as questing and experimental. The author of this preface was the same Oleg Efremov, the vibrant director of the Sovremennik. Two years earlier, he had been solicited by the Art Theatre management to take over its artistic direction. The old guard had reacted to this with horror; Boris Litvinov wrote to Brezhnev, protesting this appointment of a man he referred to as ‘the Young Pretender’, insisting that the Sovremennik was artistically inimical to the MAT: The creative practice of the Sovremennik Theatre and its leader O. N. Efremov consistently and persistently confirms a definite line, to wit: in the ideological realm pretentious fault-finding, in the artistic realm a polemic with the art of the MAT … Not to improve socialism, ‘to make it useful for mankind,’ but to improve mankind, to make it more useful for socialism.’47 In the face of this retrograde resistance, Efremov attempted to reduce the company, bring the repertory up to date, and make the management more flexible. He offered the MAT its double vocation: to preserve tradition and train citizens. He surrounded himself with talented actors, many drawn from the Sovremennik. He increased the theatre’s world renown with tours, but failed to create a community. While tickets for Lyubimov’s exciting Taganka Theatre were at a premium, tickets to the MAT had to be given away in order to fill the house.48 In 1973, the government offered the theatre a technically well-equipped new building, housing 1,370, on Tverskoy Boulevard; its vast size overwhelmed the actors. In 1987, owing to internal dissension, the theatre split in two: the ‘Chekhov’ MAT, under Efremov, moved back to its old home on Kammerherr Lane, while the ‘Gorky’ MAT, led by the actress Tatyana Doronina, stayed in the new building. ‘Hers’ retained a conservative repertory, largely made up of revivals and the perennial two-hander about Shaw and Mrs Patrick Campbell, Dear Liar (1991); while ‘His’ offered fresher Russian and foreign authors, among the latter, Ingmar Bergman, I. B. Singer, Slawomir Mrozek, Eugène Ionesco, Tennessee Williams and Peter Shaffer. Nevertheless, the defection of leading actors and Efremov’s lack of vision put

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the theatre in parlous straits in the 1990s. The house never sold out, and a scandal arose when an actor punched the managing director. Perestroika could no more reanimate the MAT than it could the Communist-Party-dominated USSR. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, the new Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation faced the same problem that Lunacharsky had in 1917. Which of the existing ‘national treasures’ was to be funded from diminished resources? It selected the Chekhov MAT but not the Gorky MAT.49 In 2000, the government asked the actor Oleg Tabakov, who had assumed the leadership of the Sovremennik and then founded his own studio, to take it over. He agreed only with provisos that there be reduced official interference; he abolished the Artistic Council and fed young actors from his studio into the productions. Although at the present time the Art Theatre does not offer the same cutting-edge production values and interpretations as other Moscow companies, the general level has risen considerably. Through its acting programmes abroad and its touring, it continues to maintain a public awareness of its name. But the concept of a National Theatre no longer pertains in a Russia which, as an oligarchy or kleptocracy tempered by democracy, still preserving outworn Communist practices while succumbing to rampant capitalism, cannot easily define its identity.

Notes 1. For instance, L. Lodian (1906), ‘The theatre in Russia’, New York Dramatic Mirror (Christmas): xi–xii, and Baroness Bila and Percy Burton, The Stage Year Book 1909 (London: Carson & Comerford, 1910), pp.131–5. The first article in English devoted solely to the MAT may be Lucy France Pierce (1913), ‘The Seagull Theatre of Moscow’, The Drama 9 (Feb.): 168–77; and the attention seems chiefly due to Gordon Craig’s Hamlet there. 2. Otˇcet o dejatel’nosti Xudožestvenno-Obšˇcedostupnogo Teatra za 1-j god (Moscow, 1899), in Moskovskij Xudožestvennyj teatr v illjustratijax i dokumentax 1898–1917 (Moscow: Izd. Moskovskogo ordena Lenina Xudožestvennogo Akademiˇceskogo Teatra Sojuza SSSR imeni M. Gor’kogo, 1938), pp.679–80. [In the notes I use a more technical method of transliteration than in the text.] An English translation can be found in Laurence Senelick (ed.) (1991), pp. 413–14. 3. V. I. Dal’ (1998), Tolkovyj slovar’ živogo velikorusskogo jazyka (1880–82) (Moscow: Russkij jazyk) II, p. 634; IV, p. 569. 4. V. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko (1938), ‘Tovarišˇcestvo dlja uˇcrezdenija Obšˇcedostupnogo teatra, 12 maja 1898 goda. Programma i smeta pervogo goda’, in Moskovskij Xudožestvennyj teatr v illjustratijax i dokumentax 1898–1917, pp. 697–700. English translation in Senelick, op.cit., pp. 414–17. 5. K. S. Stanislavskij (1954–61), Sobranie soˇcinenij (Moscow: Iskusstvo) V, pp. 174–5. English translation in Senelick, op.cit., p. 417. 6. One of the best studies of the Russian theatre’s reaction to politics in the first decade after the Revolution is V. S. Židkov (2003) Teatr i vlast’ 1917–1927. Ot svobody do ‘osoznannoj neobxodimosti’ (Moscow: Aleteja). Also see A. Z. Jufit

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

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(ed.) (1968), Russkij sovetskij teatr 1917–1921. Dokumenty i materialy (Leningrad: Iskusstvo), pp. 114–38. A. V. Solodovnika et al. (eds) (1962), Moskovskij xudožestvennyj teatr v sovetskuju époxu. Materialy i dokumenty (Moscow: Iskusstvo), p. 9. V. É. Mejerxol’d (1921), ‘Zagadka rešitsja’, Vestnik teatra, pp. 87–8. V. É Mejerxol’d and V. M. Bebutov (1921), ‘Odinoˇcestvo Stanislavskogo’, Vestnik teatra (1 May). A. V. Lunaˇcarskij (1924), Teatr i revoljutsija (Moscow: Gosizdat), p. 43. See A. Ja.Trabskij (ed.) (1952), Russkij sovetskij teatr 1921–1926. Dokumenty i materialy (Leningrad: Iskusstvo), pp. 47–8, 54, 141–57. ‘Puti Akademiˇceskogo teatra,’ Teatr (Petrograd) 1 (29 Sept. 1923): 3–4. Letter to O. S. Bokšanskaja, 18 Nov. 1923, in Vl. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko (2003), Tvorˇceskoe nasledie. Tom tretij. Pis’ma [1923–1937] (Moscow: Moskovskii Xudožestvennyj teatr), III, p. 43. The Snowmaiden is a fairy-tale play by Ostrovsky, and The Voivode an historical drama of Ostrovsky’s; A Nest of Gentry is an adaptation of Turgenev’s novel. Letter to O. S. Bokšanskaja, 20 Jan. 1924, in op.cit., III, p. 58. Letter to O. S. Bokšanskaya, 10 Feb. 1924 in op.cit., III, p. 67. L. Trotskij (1925), p. 32. Inna Soloviova, ‘Do you have relatives living abroad? Emigration as a cultural problem’, in Laurence Senelick (ed.) (1992), esp. pp. 78–81. Quoted in Maria Ignatieva (2002), ‘Oleg Tabakov at the Moscow Art Theatre. An interview with Alexander Popov’, Slavic and East European Performance 22, 2 (Spring): 43. Also see A. Ja.Trabskij (ed.) (1982), Russkij sovetskij teatr 1926–1932. ˇ Dokumenty i materialy. Cast’ pervaja (Leningrad: Iskusstvo), pp. 162–87. They were abolished in 1991, but the Artistic Council lasted another ten years until Oleg Tabakov got rid of it. Puti razvitija teatra (Stenografiˇceskii otˇcet i rešenija partiinogo sovešˇcanija pri Agitprope CK VKP (b) v mae 1927 g.) (Moscow: Teakinopeˇcat’, 1927), pp.232, 234. The entire episode is covered in detail in Anatolij Smeljanskij, Mixail Bulgakov v Xudožestvennom Teatre (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986) and its English version Is Comrade Bulgakov Dead? Anatolij Smeljanskij (1993). Walter Benjamin considered the objections to the play legitimate: see Walter Benjamin, ‘Moscow Diary’, trans. Richard Sieburth, October 35, (1986), pp. 11, 25. N. Konskij (1927), ‘Djadja Vanja’, Raboˇcij i Teatr 23 (7 June): 5. Korneev, Šebalov, Pavlenkov (1927), ‘Rabkors o MXATe’, Raboˇcij i Teatr 24 (14 June): 7. M. N. Kalinin, ‘Kollektju MXATa, 27 oktjabrja 1928 g.,’ in Solodovnikova, op.cit. pp. 12–13. Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu (2003), ‘Stalin and the Moscow Art Theatre,’ Slavic and East European Performance 23, 3 (Fall): 70–85. In a letter to Stanislavsky, 18 July 1930, Nemirovich admitted that he attended only the artistic policy meetings, not those on finances or of the Trade Union Committee. NemiroviˇcDanˇcenko, op.cit., III, p. 283. V. V. Ivanov (1964), Bronepoezd 14–61 (Moscow: Xudožestvennaja literatura). My translation. The only published English version, Armoured Train 14–69, translated by Gibson-Cowan and A. T. K. Grant (New York: International Pub., 1933), is extremely loose and turns the American into a Frenchman. I. N. Vinogradskaja, quoted in A. Ja. Trabskij (ed.) (1982), Russkij sovetskij teatr ˇ 1926–1932. Dokumenty i materialy. Cast’ pervaja, (Leningrad: Iskusstvo) pp. 184–5.

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27. N. A. Abalkin (1950), Sistema Stanislavskogo i sovetskij teatr (Moscow: Iskusstvo), p.205. Also see Židkov, op.cit., pp. 555–6. 28. O. A. Radišˇceva (1999) Stanislavskij i Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko. Istorija teatral’nyx otnošenij. 1917–1938 (Moscow: ‘Artist. Režhissër. Teatr’), p.30. This idea was supported shortly before his death in 1933 by Lunacharsky in an essay entitled ‘Stanislavsky, theatre and revolution’, which claimed that the Art Theatre could be an remarkable instrument to perform the music of revolution, if it were alert to its demands. See Lunaˇcarskij (1958), ‘Stanislavskij, teatr i revoljutsija’, in A. V. Lunaˇcarskij o teatre i dramaturgij, 2 vols (Moscow: Iskusstvo) I, pp. 716–28. 29. See O. S. Bokšanskaja’s letters to V. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko, 15 Oct.–20 Dec. 1931, quoted in Trabskij (ed.) (1982), pp. 181–2. 30. ‘The growth of the repertoire of the revolutionary theatre’, The International Theatre 3–4 (1934): 17–18. 31. Janet Thorne (1934). She was, however, impressed by the fact that bad plays could continue long enough to find their audiences and allow actors to grow. The play enjoyed a successful revival in Moscow in 1998, the result of nostalgia for the Soviet era. 32. Serge Orlovsky (1954). p. 52. Also see Židkov, op. cit., p. 555. 33. Stanislavsky himself had asked Stalin to appoint a Communist, which, he hoped, would shield the MAT from attack. 34. Jurij Ljubimov (2001), Rasskazy starogo trepaˇca (Moscow: Novosti), pp.138–9. He also claims that Stalin made the remark:‘Why is Vladimir Ilyich always running around me like that? It should be done more calmly somehow. We often sat together, conversed in a friendly fashion, settled problems, and here he is always bustling about. He ran things, at that time I only helped.’ 35. Stanislavsky quoted in A. V. Solodovnikova et al. (1962), Moskovskij xudožestvennyj teatr v sovetskuju époxu, p. 14. 36. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, A. (1995), Teatr Iosifa Stalina (Moscow: Gregori-Pejdž), p. 140. 37. Ibid., p. 144. 38. Ibid., p. 145. 39. T. S. Esenina (2003), O V. É. Mejerxol’de i Z. N. Raix. Pis’ma K. L. Rudnitskomu (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo), pp 38–9. Various sources, published and unpublished, suggest that shortly after Meyerhold’s arrest Moskvin made an attempt to speak directly to Stalin on his behalf, but the Great Leader cut him off with ‘Don’t say a word to me about Meyerhold. He’s an agent of the Tsarist secret police’ (p.206). A trawl through the archives may reveal that Moskvin helped save several theatre personnel from arrest. Nemirovich-Danchenko, for instance, wrote directly to Stalin to save the director Sushkevich. 40. V. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko to Stalin, 27 October 1938, in Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko, op.cit., IV, p. 20. 41. V. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko to Ol’ga Bokšanskaja, May 1940, ibid., IV, pp. 55–6. 42. V. I. Nemiroviˇc-Danˇcenko to the editors of Gorkovec, 10 May 1940, ibid., IV, p. 58. 43. Serge Orlovsky, op.cit., pp. 56–7. For later evidence of this attitude, see V. Ja. Vilenkin’s editorial report on N. D. Volkov’s introduction to the re-issue of Stanislavsky’s My Life in Art, 22 April 1952 (MS., Baxrušin Theatre Museum, Moscow). 44. See, for example, the articles by B.I. Rostockij in Oˇcerki istorii russkogo sovetskogo dramatiˇceskogo teatra (Moscow: Izd. Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), I, pp. 200–46, 505–48.

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45. Solodovnikova et al. (eds) (1962), p. 8 Moskovskij xudožestvennyj teatr v sovetskuju époxu, p. 8. 46. F. N. Mixalskij and M. L. Rogaˇcevskij (eds) (1972) Moskovskij xudožestvennyj teatr v sovetskuju époxu. Materialy i dokumenty. 2nd, enlarged edn (Moscow: Iskusstvo). 47. Boris Livanov to the General Party Secretary, 19 August 1970, quoted in Anatolij Smeljanskij (2001), Uxodjašˇcaja natura (Moscow: Iskusstvo), pp. 300–01. In the original, ‘the Young Pretender’ is ‘the Pretender Grigorij Otrepev’, the antagonist in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. 48. Oleg Tabakov, (2000), Moja nastojašˇcaja žizn’ (Moscow: Éksto-Press, 2000), pp. 268–72. 49. Information from Anatoly Smelyansky, the MAT’s former literary manager, Rector of the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-School and deputy director.

11 Italy: The Fancy of a National Theatre? Patricia Gaborik

The Duce went to la Duse just a few months after he became Prime Minister in 1922: ‘What can we do for the Italian theatre?’, he asked her. Pirandello was the next to have such an encounter with Mussolini, in 1923, the same year in which the government began to encourage the development of theatrical arts through new legislation, and for years afterwards allowed himself to hope that he might become the head of Italy’s new official state theatre. When he and his cohorts established their Teatro d’Arte in 1925, the first fifty thousand lire to make it happen came straight out of Mussolini’s wallet.1 A series of debates took place from the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s: what would the ideal Italian National Theatre look like? What was the proper relationship between theatre and state? In 1929 the regime sent its ‘thespian trucks’ (carri di tespi ) out to the peripheral masses. The first fascist corporation, that of Spectacle, was instituted the following year. In 1934, fascist artists unveiled their ‘theatre of the masses for the masses’ with the spectacular failure of a performance 18BL; and the Italian Royal Academy sponsored the Convegno Volta, which brought Europe’s leading theatre artists together to discuss the state of contemporary theatre and its role in the state. Then, Silvio d’Amico succeeded in establishing the National Academy for Dramatic Arts in 1935, whose task was to train the next generation of theatre practitioners. Throughout the 1930s, schools and community groups across the country enjoyed, as spectators and participants, amateur theatrics. Yet, the historical record tells us, the fascist government talked much but did little, and it failed to ever implement a National Theatre. As this volume confirms, however, National Theatres appear in numerous guises. And though indeed it fails to fit our most standard notion of National Theatres, summarized by S.E. Wilmer when he writes that they ‘establish a hegemonic interpretation and appreciation of the nation’, typically ‘in a major edifice with an impressive façade in a prominent position in the capital city’,2 I suggest that the network of performance subsidy, regulation, and creation in place under fascism be considered an alternate model of a National Theatre, one which – in a manner consistent with fascist ideology 138

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and means of mobilization – brought the theatre to the people in an attempt to nationalize the masses. Rather than dismissing the fascist programme as authoritarian oppression of the arts, we must consider it in its complexity as well as its non-uniqueness. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the thrust toward theatrical nationhood, to use Loren Kruger’s term, was ubiquitous. Theatrical nationhood, which comes to being ‘not only in the theatre but by the theatre’, seeks to represent, reflect, and assemble a national community that will recognize itself as such.3 Italy’s fascist government is far from the only one to use something other than that impressive façade in the capital city to do so; for the fascists, the goal was to create as massive an assembly as it could. The regime never accepted a single proposal for a National Theatre, but the reforms it implemented were born of the various proposals circulated during the ventennio [the two decades of Mussolini’s rule]. The way they came together reveals a nuanced and realistic look – on the part of Mussolini and his ministers as well as on the part of theatre artists – at how theatrical nationhood could function in (fascist) Italy. In the period prior to fascism, Italy’s lack of a National Theatre must be understood within the context of its youth as a nation; tremendous linguistic, cultural, and infrastructural differences from region to region; and dearth of governmental support for the theatrical arts. While patriotism and nationalism flourished in the post-unification (1861–70) era, regionalism, governmental corruption, and an unstable economy complicated attempts at state-building and national identity formation, as the legendary observation by Piedmontese aristocrat, writer, and politician Massimo d’Azeglio, ‘Now that Italy is made, we need to make Italians’, epitomizes. The liberal state’s failure to form a theatre is reflective of its inability to instil a collective national identity. Practically speaking, with the poor state of education, government corruption, and a fluctuating and divided economy, there would have been little justification or incentive to create a National Theatre, particularly when no audience-building apparatus existed. Indeed, such wishes were frequently dismissed as whim or fancy. The Italian prose theatre had no government subsidy throughout the entire nineteenth century. Occasionally, dramatic authors’ competitions and other such events were held, but only from 1853 until 1898 and intermittently thereafter. While the government did organize and support education in theatre arts and professional matters such as social security, substantial funding for the theatre itself was left to private initiatives. Thus politician Ferdinando Martini referred to any idea of a state-funded theatre as ‘la fisima di un Teatro Nazionale’ (the fancy of a National Theatre). He reasoned, like many others, that until Italy was truly a unified nation, a National Theatre would only be a false representation of such that presumed to give it birth by artificial incubation.4 While political and economic realities contributed to the liberal government’s failure to fund a state theatre, Martini’s observation points to

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the larger problem: the lack of a national unity, identification, or sense of shared culture. Mussolini and his party officials believed in the theatre’s power to inspire, and theatrical innovations under fascism were part of their broad attempt to nationalize (and fascistize) Italians. Accordingly, their theatrical pursuits were many and, as Jeffrey Schnapp pinpoints, in the 1920s had a fourfold function: to bring the theatre under fascism’s corporative economic organization, ‘promote the development of a genuine mass and national public, […] emphasize the fascist state’s vigorous efforts to “move toward the people”’ and, finally, facilitate the creation of fascist cultural forms.5 Fascism’s desired theatrical nationhood, we might say, needed something more and different than a single auditorium in Rome; the regime spent the better part of its twenty years in power finding ideologically appropriate and practically feasible ways to produce a ‘hegemonic interpretation and appreciation’ of the Nation. The regime set to work immediately to organize, support, and keep watch over the theatre. In her book on fascist organization of leisure, The Culture of Consent, Victoria de Grazia points out that both amateur and professional theatre were regulated by governmental organizations because the theatre, ‘in the words of a fascist consultant on amateur drama, was “so delicate, yet so dangerous from every point of view,” that it could not possibly be left unregulated. And yet, it was “so rich in artistic and social possibilities” that it had to be encouraged.’6 In the 1920s, commissions were established to encourage new works, and debates on the National Theatre issue took shape. By the early 1930s the carri di tespi programme was set in motion and the Corporazione dello Spettacolo, which presided over artistic spectacle, and later sport, was implemented. In 1935, the Ministry of Popular Culture assumed control of the arts, and the corporation was essentially dissolved within the Ministry. With this increased economic centralization in the 1930s came a centralized censorship apparatus as well.7 These measures indicate the attention the regime gave the theatre, but it should be noted that this attention was not merely imposition on the arts. While censorship did intensify and become more politically motivated in the later 1930s, to dismiss fascist organization of the theatre as merely oppressive would be a mistake.8 Running parallel to continuing legislative and economic measures was the ongoing discussion of whether to create a National Theatre and, if so, what such a theatre should look like. Ideas were not lacking; agreement was, and the discrepancies were based on fundamentally different notions of what kind of theatre the state should promote. On one hand there was the call for a national prose theatre resembling (with clear differences) Wilmer’s description above, on the other was the belief that a radically new ‘fascist’ theatre needed to emerge. The first serious proposals for a National Theatre appeared in 1924 and discussion on the matter reappeared not infrequently throughout the 1930s, informing at least indirectly a large part of the discussion of the 1934 Volta Conference and living on in newspaper debates throughout

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the decade. (In the 10 January 1937 edition of the Meridiano di Roma, for example, there appeared a rather substantial article on the National Theatre of Budapest; a new Italian proposal by Corrado Pavolini to be discussed below appeared just a few weeks later.) A number of Italy’s ‘men of the theatre’ presented proposals for a national prose theatre. They frequently appealed to the greatness of the Italian tradition but also implicitly recognized that a single centrally-located prestigious house like that of the Comédie-Française was not right for Italy. Pirandello began his 1926 proposal with the declaration that Italy was the only European nation lacking a state theatre. He quickly added, however, that Italy did not even have the equivalent.9 Like Luigi Chiarelli and Umberto Fracchi, who had submitted a proposal for the reform of the prose theatre two years earlier, he recognized the diverse regional makeup of the nation and therefore suggested a National Theatre with three seats – in Rome, Milan, and Turin – wherein each company would perform in its home theatre and then travel during the season to the other two. In this way, there would not be simply one great company, but three from major Italian cities who would seek to reach the others. Quite similar, and obviously greatly indebted to previous plans, was leading theatre critic Silvio d’Amico’s 1931 ‘Project for the Creation of a National Institute of Dramatic Theatre’, a proposal submitted to the Minister of Corporations, passed on to the Ministry’s Counsel and then to Mussolini, whereupon it was filed without any apparent further action. D’Amico suggested that Rome and Milan each house a National Theatre; the companies of each would hold a six-month season at home and then on alternate years travel either to the other or abroad, especially to Germany and Russia, where Italy could keep up to date on innovations. He was quick to point out that these other nations were not superior, but rather, Italy (where the modern European theatre was born) had unfortunately fallen behind in recent years due to lack of support. Therefore, he pressed, ‘The State cannot not take into account the unjust disproportion between the tens of millions that it spends for the plastic and figurative arts […] and also for music, and the zero it gives to the dramatic theatre.’10 Corrado Pavolini, who in 1930 had put forward a proposal for a state theatre that actually had some gusto (unlike the Comédie-Française in his opinion), in 1937 took a slightly different approach. His article, ‘Proposta per un Teatro dello Stato’ [Proposal for a Theatre of the State] appeared on the first page of the Meridiano di Roma on February 14. In it he reiterated a fear he alluded to even in his 1930 ‘Per un Teatro di Stato’ [For a State Theatre] that governmental implementation of a theatre would only suffocate the very spirit that makes theatre worthwhile. For him, the difference between a ‘theatre of the State’ [Teatro dello Stato] and a ‘State Theatre’ [Teatro di Stato] by 1937 had become crucial: the former would represent the nation’s cultural patrimony, whereas the latter was dangerous – the imposition of

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bureaucracy and officialdom. Thus he suggested that, rather than creating its own company, the regime appoint an observer who would travel around the country to view performances and from them hand-select the strongest companies, whose work would then be adopted and supported by the state.11 The point of view here represented by Pirandello, d’Amico, and Pavolini seems largely practical. Except for Pavolini’s rather blunt condemnation of the regime’s denigration of the dialect theatre, one does not see much direct confrontation with the very real issue of regional difference, the encouragement of which would work explicitly against fascist attempts to instil national unity. What can be seen, however, is what seems to be a rather foregone conclusion that a fascist state theatre could not have only a house in Rome. Fascist nationalism was dependent on reaching the masses. Aware that the prose theatre was having difficulty in doing so, artists insisted that state support was required; but evidently none thought that reinforcing the idea of Rome as capital by erecting a remarkable house there was a sufficient or appropriate strategy. One of the regime’s major theatrical endeavours seems directly inspired by these proposals and the assumptions contained therein. In 1929, it implemented a massive programme, with an equally daunting budget, to take its prose and lyric theatre to the people. This project was the carri di tespi, regulated by the OND (National Leisure-Time Organization, arbiter of all fascist organized leisure). The squadron of four ‘thespian trucks’ carried theatre to the provinces instead of asking citizens to travel to Rome or other urban centres. The enormous expenditure was only partly covered by ticket revenue; the OND spent more than a fifth of its funds on the trucks even during the lowest point in the depression, 1933–4.12 The squadron consisted of three prose trucks and one lyric; the first national tour began in Rome and went on to perform 67 shows in 35 cities.13 In 1930, the Milan and Florence brigades performed for more than 200,000 spectators each. By 1937 estimated audience numbers range from 600,000 to one million, and the miles travelled numbered 10,000.14 Archival documents at least through 1939 indicate plans for tours at home as well as abroad. The shows, argues de Grazia, were ‘designed expressly to impress the provincial audiences with a “sense of the miraculous”’ and, ‘experienced collectively, […] dramatically punctuated otherwise uneventful lives’.15 Indeed, the thespian trucks embodied that which was to make Mussolini’s ‘new Italians’: the collapsing of class divides, the regime bringing entertainment and services to its people, and the cultivation of Italian culture. The carri were for the ‘lowly’ masses, but were held to high performance standards: During the spring and summer months, when the ‘brigades’ made their annual ‘propaganda tours’ through the provinces, they employed a thousand persons: scores of actors and opera singers, entire choruses and

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orchestras, stagehands and sound technicians, together with the drivers of the buses and two trucks that carried equipment for a ‘technically perfect’ 890-square-meter theater with seating for 3,000–6,000 persons. Within a few hours after the troupe’s arrival at their destination, the designated clearing was transformed with the aid of 130 hired hands (300 in the case of the lyric car) into a ‘temple-like’ structure: a double stage covered by a specially designed Fortuny dome, which simulated a stage of infinite depth and allowed for special effects – starry nights, rainfall, waves, and the like.16 While this programme did invest in the prose and lyric theatre – the representatives of the nation’s cultural patrimony – it must be noted that it was a much more radical plan than any of those proposed by Pirandello, d’Amico, and colleagues. Instead of encouraging the nation to appreciate the elite culture that a national prose theatre in a great building in Rome or Milan would represent, the regime instead did what it could to strip away the sense of the elite. They brought the theatre to the towns and piazze where the masses already spent their time. The strategy embodied fascism’s collectivebuilding ethos while responding to the artists’ appeal to save the prose theatre. But the carri di tespi were not the only theatrical creations of the regime. While those performances of prose and operatic works served to promote traditional theatrical culture, they did not satisfy those who had little faith in the prose theatre as the form of the future. On the other side of the National Theatre debate was the notion that a dying art form too heavily inspired by bourgeois social habits and, more offensively, French theatrical tradition, could never form the centrepiece of a new fascist National Theatre programme. While he also supported the carri di tespi programme, Mussolini was clearly more inspired by the potential of new theatrical forms, as he expressed when responding to minister Giuseppe Bottai’s 1932 request for money to build the two theatres in Rome and Milan that d’Amico’s plan called for: No new theatres (…). It’s the usual materialistic-positivistic mistake to think that new modern buildings will rescue the theatre. […] It’s what authors create that will save the theatre, bring back the audiences, not the technical wizardry of theatre engineers (…) It is not the right moment, either psychologically or economically speaking, for building new theatres, when both old and new theatres are empty – and often rightly so.17 However, a theatre with the fascist spirit capable of addressing the masses seemed to be an avenue worth exploring. In a speech before the SIAE (Società Italiana di Autori ed Editori) on April 28, 1933, Mussolini launched the idea of

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the theatre of the masses, seeing in it a solution to the spiritual and material problems plaguing the theatre: We must prepare the theatre of the masses, a theatre that can hold 15 or 20 thousand people. […] The theatre […] must call forth the great collective passions, be inspired by a sense of lively and profound humanity, to put on stage that which truly counts in the life of the spirit and in human existence. Enough with the infamous ‘triangle’ we have been obsessed with until now.18 Almost a year to the day later, 18BL debuted in Florence. Alessandro Pavolini (brother of Corrado), a militant fascist with a strong interest in cultural affairs, was put in charge of organizing this first fascist mass spectacle as part of the annual Littoriali competition of culture and art. He recruited a cadre of young directors, designers, playwrights, and critics led by director Alessandro Blasetti. 18BL, the model number of the Fiat artillery truck affectionately named Mother Cartridge-Pouch (Mamma Giberna), was the eponymous protagonist of the epic drama, which depicted key moments in fascism’s history: the capture of Trieste and Trento during the Great War; the 1922 labour strikes leading to the March on Rome; and the draining of the Pontine marshes, a step in creating new towns in the areas surrounding Rome and in eradicating malaria. With a chief creative staff of 15, an amateur cast of 2,000, brilliant lighting effects, tons of war machinery, and a budget of approximately 349,000 lire, the spectacle was meant to usher in a new age of Italian theatre, all the while celebrating the history, present triumph, and future of fascism. Designing and building of the theatre began in February 1934. Delays and then inclement weather pushed the performance date back one week. With construction of the theatre entrance completed at mid-day, the performance went on at 9.30 pm, 29 April, 1934. An estimated 20,000 spectators were in attendance. At its inception, 18BL’s theatrical space provided an alternative model to the grand proscenium stages of the prose theatre. Ideally, new spaces such as this would create out of the audience a unified whole. Blasetti’s designs drew inspiration from ancient sources, contemporary Italian experiments, the Gropius/Piscator Total theatre, and the ‘theatre of the future’ of Norman Bel Geddes. Schnapp describes how the director ‘had initially dreamed of building an amphitheater that would turn the conventional Greco-Roman theater inside out, placing the audience at the center of a crater, surrounded by a circular upward sloping stage.’19 The performance site, a gully on the river bank called the Albereta dell’Isolotto, however, required an alternative staging. The north bank became the seating area, which betrayed fascism’s elitism despite Blasetti’s impossible hope of creating equal visibility throughout the large auditorium.

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There were two seating areas: the ‘popular’ had less expensive unassigned seating on the periphery, whereas fascist dignitaries and elite audience members were front and centre. Moreover, the physical space required separate entrances to the two seating areas. The double riverboat-bridge, originally intended as the sole entrance to the theatre, became a grand processional entrance for the elite, which the popular audience would gaze upon as it entered from a blind alleyway on the other side of the Arno.20 Likewise, the masses had poorer views of the stage itself. The steep southern bank became a stage of gargantuan proportions: about 200 metres wide and 150 or 300 metres deep, depending on whose records and estimates are accepted.21 The slope was built up and down to create twelve backstage and staging areas for moving the huge machinery and numbers of cast members. Light helped focus spectators on the appropriate areas, and Blasetti envisioned ‘a shadow play in reverse, with figures rising up and disappearing rapidly over the horizon line. The actors and machines, that is, would be viewed in profile from below’ with the help of pyrotechnics, searchlights, and battery-powered beacons.22 The metallic grandeur, however indebted to films of Dreyer and Eisenstein and to Appia’s theatre, was perfectly suited to fascist technophilia, but the practical realities of staging such an enormous spectacle left much to be accomplished. Those seated in the popular area could hear but not see well, precluding, according to Schnapp, any ‘instinctual attraction to the mass of protagonists on stage’.23 Mario Verdone’s testimony corroborates Schnapp’s assessment. As a child, Verdone attended the performance and admits, ‘there was a terrible dust storm, and, to be honest, one could not see or understand very much, especially if one had been allocated one of the cheaper seats. It is therefore not astonishing that the audience showed little enthusiasm after this “exemplary” mass performance.’24 Despite some ambitious plans, the attempt to draw the crowd together in a unified whole was betrayed by the lesser experience given to the masses. Highly-regarded critic and playwright Massimo Bontempelli, a chief supporter of the theatre of the masses, found 18BL difficult to defend. In his review, published the day after the performance, he declared the show ‘almost wholly unsuccessful’:

The authors of 18BL, provided with real trucks, real hills, a real sky, real soldiers, real Balilla, real cannons, real horses, have lost every sense of theatrical effects, and have given a spectacle in which all the real things seemed like shams. With explosions and roars of every kind, the show was mute; with all the men and horses and machines that ran, it generated a still world. With so much intensity of passion and history was born a series of empty spaces into which the spectators felt themselves on the point of falling.25

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Thus the fascist theatre of the masses for the masses, formerly the hope for the new Italian stage, was laid to rest. But its failure does not render it less important in fascist schemes to deploy the theatre in its nation-building attempts. Indeed, while on the one hand Mussolini declared that it was not the time for ‘new theatres’, on the other he was urging artists not only to build new theatres, but to create new theatre. The same observation can be made in regard to the carri di tespi programme. When the Duce refused national prose theatre proposals on financial grounds, that programme was operating with funds generously dispersed. Therefore, we might think of Mussolini’s apparent reluctance to fund the proposed National Theatres not as unwillingness to support a National Theatre,26 but rather as his recognition of the fact that the work of a National Theatre could be – and was being – done in ways more suited to the ethos of fascist nationalism. In point of fact, Mussolini put his money where his mouth was: in a ‘popular’ approach to theatrical nationhood. During the fascist ventennio, the different theatrical models discussed and implemented represented the state’s goals as well as, their vigorous participation would suggest, those of theatre practitioners. Undoubtedly this balance was difficult to achieve, as was that between tradition and innovation, a tension that marked most of fascism’s social and cultural programmes. In the postwar period and even today, the challenges facing Italy’s theatrical nationhood are not much different. As might be expected, there was great resistance to any programme with nationalist overtones after fascism’s fall, and when the National Theatre question came up, many theatre artists adopted a regionally-minded approach – at least officially – to the question. A National Theatre would be pointless, many argued, when there was no single theatre that could accurately represent the diverse theatrical traditions of, for example, Venice, Naples, and Palermo simultaneously. While there is of course some truth to such an argument, its anti-nationalist undertone is made clear by a repeated observation that Rome – the capital city and thus by rights the locus of the National Theatre – was hardly the people’s capital. Milan, home of the anti-fascist resistance and Giorgio Strehler’s Piccolo Teatro, was the ‘moral’ capital and thus had claims on representative status as well.27 In fact, for most of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, legislation naming both the Teatro di Roma and the Piccolo Teatro ‘National Theatres’ has stalled in government bureaucracy. These theatres, already Italy’s representatives in the European Union of Theatres founded by Strehler, would thus gain National status largely because of their international presence, and internationalist attitude.28 Naming them National Theatres, it seems, would have quite a different purpose than that called for by artists of the ventennio. However, this legislation was still, as far as anyone could tell, held up in governmental quagmire when, in the spring of 2006, Alain Elkann of the Ente Teatrale Italiano, a government-directed office for the promotion and management of theatrical arts operating under the auspices of the Ministry of

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Culture, announced that Rome’s historic Teatro Valle (where Six Characters in Search of an Author had its 1921 premiere) would become, as the headline of the Corriere della Sera cried, ‘like the Comédie-Française’: beginning with the 2006–07 season, the repertory would be entirely comprised of Italian works. The Valle, unlike the stabile Teatro di Roma and Piccolo Teatro, does not produce shows of its own. Rather, it is a house managed by the ETI that simply hosts those productions selected by the ETI and the Valle directorship. In the absence of any new official National Theatre, then, the Valle has taken on the task of celebrating Italy’s theatrical patrimony. ‘It was time’, Elkann announced, ‘that also Italy, like France and England, endow a stage exclusively dedicated to an Italian repertoire, classic and contemporary. And it seems right to me that the Valle, site of tradition, become that house.’29 The Valle’s current director, Salvatore Aricò, finds it right as well, though he did not choose this for his theatre.30 The directive to present an exclusively Italian repertory came from the government and the ETI, who have their own reasons. ‘Nationalist?’ I asked him. Even if they were, he points out, the theatre’s motivations can be different, more. From his perspective, the theatre’s task will be ‘national, not nationalist’, a distinction that sounds to me much like Pavolini’s ‘Theatre of the State’, not ‘State Theatre’. As the Valle has done from its eighteenth-century inception, it can use this opportunity to give maximum expression to modern theatre and to new Italian voices, hosting performances by Italy’s various municipal theatres of classics and new works. But these national voices need not speak to one nation alone; indeed, he hopes they will speak universally, perhaps even as they rediscover their Italian soul. Thus, he explained his hope that, after years in which governmental support for the theatre was lacking, this dedication to an all-Italian repertory can give the country back its theatrical voice. Still, the Valle does not carry an official label of ‘National Theatre’. While the repertory change was announced as such in the newspapers, the ETI and Valle shy away from such language and instead have given the house the subtitle, ‘Teatro Italiano’. As critic Oliviero Ponte di Pino commented, the Valle is ‘an empty box, therefore it can’t aspire to become a national theatre even if it decides to host only Italian productions.’31 However, its mission is quite clearly similar to that of other theatres officially given National Theatre status. Moreover, its showcasing of Italian works by companies from various reaches of the nation’s map responds directly to the particularities, such as regionalism, at the heart of Italy’s theatrical nationhood. Rather than taking for granted that Italy – whether during fascism or early in the twenty-first century – has failed to produce a National Theatre, we might instead use the Italian case truly to reconsider the various profiles a National Theatre might have. Did the fascist government give up on the National Theatre? Is the Teatro Valle truly only an empty box? In Italy, is there only the fancy of a National Theatre? Or something different, something more?32

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Notes 1. Franca Angelini (1988), Teatro e spettacolo nel primo novecento (Roma: Laterza), p. 199. 2. S. E. Wilmer, ‘On Writing National Theatre Histories’, in S.E. Wilmer (ed.) (2004), p. 18. 3. Loren Kruger (1992), p. 3. Here I cite more specifically her address, ‘Nationalizing the House’, delivered at the National Theatres of Europe: Constructing National Identities Symposium, Dublin, March 2005. See chapter 3 of this volume. 4. Gianfranco Pedullà (1994), Il teatro italiano nel tempo del fascismo, (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 61–2. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 5. Jeffrey T. Schnapp (1996), pp. 16–17. 6. Victoria De Grazia (2002), p. 166. 7. Before 1931 censorship was mainly handled by local prefects, but beginning in that year the Minister of the Interior viewed manuscripts. This was meant to enhance consistency and rapidity in judgment, but also had the effect of the government’s more direct control over the some 1,500 scripts that came through each year. By 1934, then, censorship regulations were relatively severe, given Mussolini’s previous ‘hands-off’ policy when it came to determining which art and artists could flourish under his watch. 8. See Pedullà, op.cit., for detailed accounts of theatrical measures in the 1920s and 30s. Though Pedullà does tend to highlight the extent to which fascist policies in the thirties were an imposition on the theatre, he rightly questions the typical historiography, largely influenced by the frustrated idealist Silvio d’Amico, that suggests that fascism’s reactionary politics only resulted in retarding the theatre’s development. 9. Pirandello, from La Fiera Letteraria, (5 December 1926) in Federico Doglio (1976), Il teatro pubblico in Italia, (Roma: Bulzoni), Appendix X, p. 49. 10. Document recovered, with attached note describing its fate, in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma, Fondo PCM Busta 1537, Fascicolo 3.212, 1146. The subtext of d’Amico’s parenthetical information indicates how much of the State’s resources were devoted to antiquities and preserving cultural heritage. While d’Amico certainly saw the tradition of prose theatre in the same light, positing it as such may have actually worked to his disadvantage, as the regime seemed more interested in promoting the new that could come from the theatre. In fact, d’Amico’s project included the establishment of the two main theatres, an experimental house, a library, a theatre school; that which was actually implemented by the State was the school: that aspect of the project most capable of leaving behind a legacy of accomplishment. 11. See Corrado Pavolini (1930), ‘Per un Teatro di Stato’, L’Italia Letteraria (30 November), p. 5; and (1937), ‘Proposta per un Teatro dello Stato’, Meridiano di Roma (14 February), pp. 1–2. 12. De Grazia, op.cit., p. 163. 13. Schnapp, op.cit., p. 18. 14. Ibid and De Grazia, op.cit., p. 163. 15. De Grazia, op.cit., pp. 162–3. 16. Ibid. Schnapp’s figures differ slightly. He mentions 400 company members, and audience figures vary as well (p. 18). 17. Doug Thompson, ‘The Organisation, Fascistisation and Management of Theatre in Italy, 1925–1943’, in Günter Berghaus (1996), p. 96.

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18. Doglio, op.cit., Appendix XIII, pp. 61–4, cites the version published in Nuova Antologia, May–June, 1933. 19. Schnapp, op.cit., p. 59. A quick perusal through theatrical journals of the period, such as Scenario, indicates the great interest in modern theatre architecture; many new designs were based on ‘totalizing’ and enclosing concepts and look like sports stadiums as much as theatres. 20. Schnapp, op.cit., pp. 64–5. 21. Schnapp, op.cit., p. 60. 22. Schnapp, op.cit., p. 61. 23. Schnapp, op.cit., p. 80. 24. Mario Verdone, ‘Mussolini’s Theatre of the Masses’, in Günter Berghaus (ed.) op.cit., p. 80. 25. Massimo Bontempelli (1974), L’avventura novecentista, ed. and intro. Ruggero Jaccobi, (Firenze: Vallechi), p. 390. 26. Doug Thompson represents the dominant approach to this issue, even as he acknowledges that Mussolini preferred a popular approach to nation-building. He writes of the proposals put forth in the 1920s, as well as Mussolini’s asking Pirandello to devise a plan, ‘but in the end, nothing was to come of it.’ Likewise, he cites Mussolini’s argument above to point out that it would ‘have seemed insensitive’ to build a National Theatre in the midst of economic crisis, and that ‘a National Theatre, had it been created’ would not have helped the regime ‘move toward the people’, given its enormous cost for a small percentage of the population to enjoy. Thompson, however, continuously stresses the small amount of money allocated to the theatre, which is not adequately supported by the archival record, as both de Grazia’s and Schnapp’s analyses indicate. 27. See Alba Amoia (1977). 28. Senato della Republica, Legislatura 13 Disegno di legge N. 4176, www.senato.it, accessed September 20, 2005. See also Daniele Vianello (1998) as well as Oliviero Ponte di Pino, ‘Il governo del Teatro’. (Golem: 09.28.02.97, www.golemindispensabile.it/ArchivioGolem/Golem09/pontedipino.htm.). For a general understanding of the situation and how it developed, I interviewed Vianello (22 September 2005) and conversed via email (October 2005 and again in December 2006) and interview (18 December 2005, Milan, Italy) with Ponte di Pino. I reported on the situation at the time in ‘The Piccolo Teatro di Milano and Teatro di Roma: “National Theatres” as Ambassadors to the European Theatrical Community’, at the American Society for Theatre Research Annual Meeting in Toronto, November 2005. 29. Emilio Constantini, ‘Il Valle? Come la Comédie Française’, Corriere della Sera, (1 June, 2006), p. 17: ‘Era ora che anche l’Italia, come la Francia o l’Inghilterra, si dotasse un palcoscenico esclusivamente dedicato al repertorio italiano, classico e contemporaneo. E mi sembra giusto che sia il Valle, luogo di tradizione, a diventarne la “casa”’. It is not clear what would happen to the Valle’s mission if the delayed legislation regarding the Piccolo and Teatro di Roma were eventually to be revived and implemented. The planned legislation does not however mandate an exclusively Italian repertory in any case. While it does call for the theatres to present and valorize Italian dramaturgy, it also encourages exchange with other theatres, both native and foreign. Therefore it is possible that the Valle would continue its Italian repertory while the others would continue in their current mode as well. Needless to say, however, it would seem that the ETI implemented the new Valle programme precisely because the plan for the Piccolo and Teatro

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di Roma, part of a larger law reforming theatrical funding and organization, has never successfully been put into action. 30. Salvatore Aricò, interview with author, Rome, Italy, 22 September 2006. 31. Email correspondence, 24 December 2006. Ponte de Pino wrote, ‘[The Teatro Valle] non è un teatro di produzione, come il Piccolo e lo stabile di Roma. E’ una scatola vuota, dunque non può ambire a diventare un teatro nazionale, anche se decide di ospitare solo spettacoli italiani.’ 32. Research for this chapter was completed thanks to the generosity of the American Academy in Rome, where I was the Paul Mellon postdoctoral fellow in Modern Italian Studies during the academic year 2005–06, and of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in whose 2005 summer seminar, History and Interpretations of Fascism, I participated. I also thank Salvatore Aricò and Oliviero Ponte di Pino for frank conversation, and the staff of Rome’s Archivio Centrale dello Stato for patient assistance.

Part C New Functions and Structures in a Changing Europe

I

Western Europe

12 Proliferation and Differentiation of National Theatres in France David Whitton

Given the decentralizing tendency to scatter the epithet ‘national’ like confetti, identifying the contours of France’s National Theatre today is not as simple as it might once have been. Although the Comédie-Française is still considered by many French people (not to mention tourists and other foreigners) as the repository of national theatrical identity, it is currently only one of five National Theatres maintained by the French state. The latter, in turn, are flagships in an operation involving more than one hundred spokendrama institutions which the Ministry of Culture designates as ‘national’ within a three-tier classificatory system. One tier is represented by the five National Theatres (Théâtres Nationaux): the Comédie-Française, Théâtre National de Strasbourg, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe and Théâtre National de la Colline. These are public institutions which are created, owned and capable of being dissolved by the state and are placed under the direct control of a Minister of State. Their directors are appointed by Presidential decree on five-year contracts and their administrators by the Minister of Culture. (Similar conditions apply to the Opéra National and the Opéra Bastille, which will be excluded from consideration in what follows.) Each of them occupies a particular evolutionary niche in France’s theatrical ecology, a niche which has been fashioned by an interaction of tradition, political agendas articulated through statutes and ministerial intervention, and creative personnel. Their artistic missions are defined by statute, but in somewhat vague and general terms, allowing them to change over time in response to shifting circumstances and political priorities. These constitute the officially designated National Theatres of France. Examining what that designation signifies in terms of the national interests they represent is one of the purposes of what follows. A second tier comprises approximately forty National Dramatic Centres (Centres Dramatiques Nationaux, usually abbreviated to CDN), plus four Centres Dramatiques Nationaux Pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse (CDNEJ), dedicated to children’s and youth theatre. These are distributed throughout the regions of France, including the Paris region. Some of them originated as 153

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regionally-based private theatre companies which were adopted by the state either during the postwar push towards decentralization, or more recently. Now, they are created and maintained as partnerships between the Ministry of Culture and the relevant municipal and regional authorities. They generally comprise both a building and a theatre company (the legal status of which can vary widely according to whether they are in the public or private domain) and a mission which includes producing theatre, receiving visiting productions, and regional outreach. They include the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) which, since its relocation from Paris to Villeurbanne in 1972 has been administered as a CDN. The TNP is one of a number of CDNs which rather confusingly have the words ‘Théâtre National’ in their name but are not actually National Theatres in the full sense. This is because certain CDNs (of which the TNP is one) are further defined by the oxymoronic title of Regional National Theatres (Théâtre National de Région), i.e. regionallyimplanted theatres whose zone of cultural activity is defined by statute as extending to the whole of metropolitan France.1 Thirdly there are the National Stages (Scènes Nationales), at present numbering approximately sixty, brought into existence when the system of Maisons de la Culture created by Malraux under De Gaulle was rationalized under Mitterrand. The original polyvalent mission and multi-purpose premises of the Maisons de la Culture had often been found to be impractical and a number of them were converted to operate primarily or exclusively as theatres. Others were built from scratch. With a permanent administrative and technical staff but no resident company, their function is to provide a venue for touring productions or local producing agencies. As is clear from the above, in France a theatre (whether a building or a company or both) may be designated as ‘national’ either because it operates at a national level, or because it participates in a nationwide infrastructure of regional or local provision. Clearly both can be said to represent national interests, but in different ways. Decentralization is as integral to postwar French national policy as sustaining a cohesive internal and external national identity. From one perspective, therefore, it would be possible to regard the totality of this distributed structure of publicly financed companies and stages as constituting France’s National Theatre. In that case, however, it would logically be necessary also to include other centrally supported components which do not happen to be called ‘national’ but which play complementary roles in the maintenance of France’s cultural state. These range from Regional Dramatic Centres (Centres Dramatiques Régionaux), through accredited theatres (Théâtres Missionnés, Scènes Conventionnées), to the five hundred or so state-subsidized private companies. The latter include Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil and Peter Brook’s company at the Bouffes du Nord whose high international visibility makes them of national strategic importance for the projection of French cultural prestige.

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Alternatively – and this will be the approach adopted in this chapter – it can make more sense to focus on the institutions statutorily identified as National Theatres while recognizing that their role can only be understood in the context of a state which is profoundly implicated in the provision of theatre at all levels. The shorthand expression by which this broader phenomenon is known is théâtre public,2 implying that theatre is a function whose importance justifies it being treated as a public service and whose provision must ultimately be assured by the state. As Loren Kruger reminds us elsewhere in this volume, the concept has a lineage reaching back to the Revolution, though its practical incorporation into government action is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Its trajectory – pluralist rather than unitary, decentralized rather than metropolitan – was mapped out during the Fourth Republic in the late 1940s and 1950s. In recent decades, although the French state has maintained a marked reluctance to withdraw from the public sphere and leave things to the market, considerable uncertainty has surrounded the purpose(s) which the cultural state’s infrastructure is meant to serve. To explore the perceived crisis currently affecting public theatre would take us too far from the primary interest of this chapter.3 But it is important to note that it would be difficult to interpret the current arrangements for the National Theatres without reference to the ongoing debate in which they are imbricated about the function of théâtre public. A further caveat applies. It may be a mistake to attribute too much conscious intentionality to the existing formations. In part they are the product of opportunistic reforms, reactions to crises, accommodations to the preferences of individual directors, or post hoc formalizations of haphazard developments. The tension between the desire of all French administrations for Napoleonic orderliness and their pragmatism in response to eventualities seems to be a contributory factor in the complexities and anomalies of a system which one frustrated insider has described as combining the worst features of Mediterranean-style chaos and Germanic regimentation (‘le bordel latin et l’institution à l’allemande’).4 Nevertheless, even allowing for the vagaries of events, a marked shift in priorities can be seen in the evolution of the National Theatres since 1968 when Jack Lang, the future socialist Minister of Culture, published his doctoral thesis on theatre and the French state.5 At that time France possessed three National Theatres: the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre de France, more commonly known as the Odéon, which at that time was being operated under concession by Jean-Louis Barrault’s (private) company, and the TNP, as the former Théâtre National Populaire had been titled since Vilar became its director in 1951. Thus, the state was supporting two complementary houses of high culture – one devoted to preserving the classical repertoire, the other to prestigious contemporary theatre forms – together with a third, demotic house which in turn complemented the others with its mission to disseminate the best of the classical and modern repertoire to the widest possible audience.6 In principle, this tri-partite arrangement translated the nation’s

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cultural priorities in supposedly appropriate, or at least satisfyingly symmetrical, proportions. In reality, all three were about to plunge into crisis and the assumptions supporting the structure as a whole were becoming untenable. The TNP had emerged during the Fourth Republic (1946–58) as one of the most socially progressive theatres in Europe but by 1968 it had lost its way. The ultra-conservative Comédie-Française had reluctantly started to make concessions to modernity in the mid-1960s by admitting the occasional living writer to the repertoire and inviting directors from outside to stage the occasional production, but the pressures to modernize properly were becoming irresistible. And the Théâtre de France, instead of completing the picture by bridging an elitist Comédie-Française and a populist TNP, in reality occupied an ambiguous hinterland with no clearly discernible national mission in respect of either repertoire or audience.7 Comparing this snapshot of 1968 with the current landscape, the most striking transformation is the disappearance in all but name of the TNP as a locus of French national identity, and the appearance of at least two (and arguably three) National Theatres with a European orientation. As regards the TNP, the political consensus that led to it successfully challenging the Comédie-Française’s historic claim to represent the nation theatrically was a short-lived product of the postwar climate. France emerged from the Occupation dangerously exposed to factional conflict. While De Gaulle set about constructing an acceptable historical narrative to account for the so-called années noires, the dark years between 1940 and 1944, it was politically imperative to employ every means, culture included, to promote a sense of national unity (l’union sacrée) in order to bridge economic and ideological differences and heal the bitter divisions caused by the recent past. The TNP, whose origins lay in earlier socialist-inspired movements to democratize theatre-going, became one of the prime beneficiaries of the postwar investment in cultural infrastructure. For a brilliant period in the 1950s, the TNP succeeded in assembling a socially mixed audience, including many who would never have normally had access to legitimate theatre. To many observers it seemed a beacon of democratic theatre culture. Even at the time, however, the humanist belief in a shared culture that underpinned Vilar’s artistic policy was identified by some as paternalistic and escapist, a view which was irrefutably vindicated by the events of 1968. Following Vilar’s resignation in 1963, the haemorrhaging sense of purpose, aggravated by the government’s failure to support his successors, meant that in the years leading up to 1968 the TNP was in more or less permanent budgetary and artistic crisis. In the post-1968 shake-out the government’s preferred option was to bring in one of the TNP’s most outspoken critics, Roger Planchon, as the only director with the political credibility to restore its sense of mission. Planchon’s reluctance to move to Paris led to a second option – decentralizing the TNP by re-locating it to the Théâtre de la Cité, Planchon’s theatre in the Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne. Planchon, however, did not wish his company

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to be nationalized either. Hence the eventual outcome, which was to create a National Dramatic Centre at Villeurbanne operating with the TNP name and logo and under the co-directorship of Planchon, Patrice Chéreau and Roger Gilbert. In the short term this was a satisfactory outcome: the TNP was reinvigorated and decentralized, which was entirely in the spirit of the operation, while its directors remained in charge of an independent company. In the long term, despite the TNP’s subsequent ‘promotion’ to status of Regional National Theatre, it may have made it easier for successive governments to focus their priorities and funding elsewhere. A corollary to this outcome was to leave the former TNP premises in Paris vacant. The theatre in the monumental Palais de Chaillot is a notoriously difficult building situated in an unpromising location in the 16th arrondissement. In principle, its function has always involved popular outreach, the precise meaning of which has mutated over time. In the 1920s it meant trickle-down dissemination of high culture. Firmin Gémier, the first director of the Théâtre National Populaire, used it to bring productions from the Comédie-Française and the Opéra into a big house where they could be seen and enjoyed by mass audiences at relatively low cost. In the 1950s the company assembled by Vilar generated tailor-made productions whose style and content were appropriate to a people’s ‘Palace of Culture’. When the TNP moved out, the Chaillot found itself not only without a director and company but also in need of a new justification for existing. Jack Lang who was appointed to run it in 1973, diagnosed a need to stay within the spirit of Vilar’s idea of a theatre of contemporary social relevance, but modernizing it with a contemporary aesthetic. One of his first actions was to commission a reconstruction to create a flexible ‘black box’ theatre, a costly, fraught and endlessly complicated building programme which blighted his tenure. His successor Antoine Vitez (1981–88) also tried to bring ‘popular’ and ‘experimental’ into alignment, using his actors and the vast stage, in a conventional configuration, to mount probing explorations of classical and contemporary texts. He famously (but not entirely convincingly) claimed this style of theatre to be ‘an elitist art for everyone’.8 In utter contrast to Vitez, his successor (1988–2000) was the showman Jérôme Savary, founder of the Grand Magic Circus, whose irreverent and hugely popular production of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was disapprovingly likened to Dali’s painting of the Mona Lisa with a moustache. With Savary’s appointment as artistic director, ‘people’s theatre’ (théâtre du peuple) could be said to have shed all its former high-minded civic connotations. It was now primarily understood as populist, with an emphasis on musical theatre and spectacle within a mixed economy which also included a significant proportion of co-productions and visiting productions. The iconoclast Savary succeeded beyond expectations in exploiting the Chaillot’s two stages to capacity by doubling its audience figures. Successes of this sort are almost entirely dependent on the personality of the administrator, a factor which most recent governments have recognized

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and positively encouraged as a strategy for all the National Theatres. Savary’s successor since 2000, Ariel Goldenberg, for example, was appointed partly because of his track record in blending dance and theatre and his known appeal to younger audiences. Of the five National Theatres, the Chaillot appears to have the most demographically mixed constituency. Its audience base includes a substantial proportion of tourists from other parts of France and abroad. The latter of course also visit the Comédie-Française in significant numbers, albeit for different reasons and with different expectations. Equally emblematic of shifting national priorities since 1968 is the mutation of the Odéon-Théâtre de France into the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. Barrault’s company, which ran the second National Theatre from 1959 to 1968, was tailor-made for the job. As the leading exemplar at the time of high-quality theatre in the studio tradition of Jouvet and Dullin, a touch avant-garde (but not enough to frighten the bourgeoisie), with impeccably French credentials and held in high international esteem, it was the ideal showcase for the prestige culture which De Gaulle and Malraux wished to display to the world. International outreach formed a significant part of the mission, and this involved tours to Russia, the USA, the Edinburgh Festival, South America and so on. Rather than being linked to France’s European aspirations within what was still a primarily economic union, it contributed to the global projection and protection of francophone culture which was a mainstay of Gaullist politique de grandeur. In contrast, the current Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe reflects a re-focusing of France’s foreign policy to prioritize her role within the European Union. Its installation in the Odéon is not without significance. Whereas the ComédieFrançaise is first and foremost a company, and the TNP an idea, the Odéon is an ancient monument in which numerous National Theatres have taken shape. As a result, its identity and mission have been unstable, but it still retains the particular prestige of being the second National Theatre. Inaugurated in 1782 as a royalist playhouse, it was shortly to be transformed into a key site for the enactment of the Revolution. Periodically during its varied history, the stage has belonged to the Comédie-Française but it has also been a neighbourhood theatre, a boulevard theatre, a musical theatre, and a site for serious drama under the directorships of Antoine and Lugné-Poe. Some of its rich history can be read in its regular changes of name under successive political regimes: Théâtre Français (1782), Théâtre de la Nation (1789), Théâtre de l’Egalité (1794), Odéon (1796), Théâtre de l’Impératrice (1808), Second Théâtre Français (1819). Under more recent administrations it continued to be treated as a political football. In the postwar reconstruction it was given as a second house to the Comédie-Française, only to be taken away in 1959 by Malraux (reportedly as a punishment after an argument with the latter’s administrator) who installed Jean-Louis Barrault to run it as the Odéon-Théâtre de France. After the student occupation in May

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1968 and the subsequent expulsion of Barrault’s company, it became a fiefdom of the Comédie-Française once more. That arrangement was revoked after the election of a socialist government in 1981 when Mitterrand’s Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, identified the Odéon as the preferred base for the European theatre which he hoped to establish in Paris under the directorship of Giorgio Strehler. (The Odéon had already been used in the 1960s as the base for the international Théâtre des Nations.) The Comédie-Française fought hard to hold on to it, resulting in an uneasy compromise whereby the two operations shared the building for six months each year. Strehler’s foothold was threatened during the right’s temporary control of the legislature (1986–8) but restored when Lang returned to the Ministry in 1988. Moreover, Strehler then persuaded him to sign over another historic playhouse, the Vieux-Colombier, as a base for an international acting school to work in partnership with the Théâtre de l’Europe. A year later, Lang decreed that the Odéon would be given over entirely to the Théâtre de l’Europe. As a quid pro quo, the Vieux-Colombier would be entirely renovated and handed to the Comédie-Française. The Odéon-Théatre de l’Europe has now operated under three administrators (the Italian Strehler, the Catalan Lluis Pasqual, and Georges Lavaudant) and seems currently well established as one of two European theatres maintained by EU member states (the other is the Piccolo Teatro–Teatro d’Europa in Milan). It is one of the twenty member-theatres of the Union of European Theatres. Like the other French National Theatres, its statutory mission is defined in deliberately vague terms, in this case, ‘fostering joint projects with stage directors, actors, playwrights and other figures involved in the dramatic arts in Europe, to present new works and breathe new life into Europe’s artistic heritage’.9 In practice this means a mix of foreign-language productions produced in-house or imported, and foreign works in French translation. At the time of writing (2006) the Odéon is undergoing a major renovation and refit at a projected cost of 30 million euros. The scale of capital and recurrent investment in the Odéon-Théatre de l’Europe is just one manifestation of France’s desire to provide cultural leadership in the enlarged European Union. Another is the promotion of the former Centre Dramatique de l’Est (CDE) to the status of Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) in 1971. The original CDE was a classic product of the first postwar wave of decentralization when a number of independent companies operating in the provinces were adopted by the Ministry of Culture. The fact that the Centre Dramatique de l’Est, alone among the original five CDNs created at that time, has achieved National Theatre status is mainly attributable to its location on France’s eastern border in a region which for centuries had been a European theatre of war. After the Second World War Alsace ceased to be a militarized buffer zone and was placed at the geographical heart of the Franco-German project for Europe, automatically conferring a particular strategic significance on any theatre that was established in the

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region. There is also a symbolic resonance in the fact that the edifice converted to accommodate the theatre was originally built in 1892 to house the Parliament of Alsace-Lorraine. During the 1990s a major capital investment programme was undertaken, confirming the importance which successive governments have attached to maintaining a high profile bilingual theatre in close proximity to the French seat of the European Parliament. The TNS is singular in several respects. It is the only National Theatre to be established outside the capital and the only one to have a local as well as national identity (none of the other four draws an audience from its immediate locality). Secondly – and not surprisingly given its strategic location – its reach is further extended by a supra-national mission under a charter which supposedly guarantees it ‘the resources needed to pursue a regional, national and European mission’.10 Reconciling these is obviously a tall order and in practice none of its directors has succeeded in giving equal weight to the three strands of mission. Most have found it expedient to cut down on regional touring in order to concentrate on the last two. Thirdly, the TNS’s national profile is reinforced by having a fully-integrated national theatre school, based on the acting school originally created by Michel Saint-Denis. The Ecole Superieur d’Art Dramatique is one of only two national theatre schools (the other being the Paris Conservatoire) and the only one to provide training in directing and design as well as acting. The European mission is reflected in programming. Typically, of the 15–20 productions presented each year, 4 or 5 will be by the resident company, 3 or 4 will be co-productions with other European theatres, and the remainder will be visiting shows, including a number of foreign-language productions. Last of the five National Theatres in order of foundation, the Théâtre National de la Colline, inaugurated in 1989, offers further evidence of a shift in national priorities since 1968. In its previous incarnation as the TEP, this National Theatre, like the TNP, also had its origins in policies designed to achieve better geographical and demographic distribution of theatre. Decentralization was not solely concerned with irrigating le désert (as the provinces were sometimes referred to) but aimed also to establish theatres in parts of the Paris region and within the capital itself where none existed. In the 20th arrondissement, this led to the award of special subsidized status to an independent company led by Guy Rétoré which later (1963) became the TEP (Théâtre de l’Est Parisien) with CDN status and which eventually (1972) acquired full National Theatre status. From its earliest days as an amateur company, the TEP was strongly embedded in its neighbourhood, producing work that reflected the people, their history and the issues that concerned them, in a district with a predominantly working-class and immigrant population. Despite the recognized quality of its work, the TEP was the poor cousin among National Theatres, receiving the smallest subsidy and inadequately housed in a converted cinema. The last deficiency was addressed in 1989 with an impressive (if undersized) new

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theatre constructed on the site of the old one – along with a new director, name and mission. (The TEP has remained in existence, reverting to its former status as a subsidized independent theatre and operating as a neighbourhood theatre in nearby premises provided by the Ministry.) Thus, while the Théâtre National de la Colline was not exactly created ex nihilo, the transformation is so radical that it really merits being seen as an entirely new National Theatre, the first to be brought into existence in thirty years. The focus on local and participatory action has completely gone. The new and undoubtedly more prestigious mission is to stage an exclusively modern and contemporary repertoire, French and non-French. The creation of a National Theatre dedicated to writing might be seen as part of a reaction against the powers acquired by directors and the big-budget, big-concept productions which the funding structures for théâtre public encouraged in the 1980s. Under its first director, Jorge Lavelli (1989–96), the programme showed a bias towards the Spanish or Latin-American writers (Lorca, Arrabal, Copi, Valle-Inclán) with whom Lavelli himself had made his directorial mark. But there was much more besides, and it has been rightly observed that Lavelli built up ‘a wide-ranging and discriminating picture of the twentieth-century repertoire’.11 Lavelli’s successor since 1996, Alain Françon, has modified this profile by bringing a commitment to contemporary writing to the fore. Françon has developed close working relationships with Michel Vinaver and Edward Bond (he is, in fact, the leading producer of Bond and inaugurated his tenure at the Colline with a revival of Bond’s In The Company of Men). Françon, who is particularly keen to involve living writers rather than promoting recent classics, has proved more adventurous than his predecessor when it comes to staging new work and has established a series of publications allowing writers to comment on their work in performance. As for the Comédie-Française, it would be possible to write in extended detail about the reforms it has undergone since 1968. However, the feverish excitement generated within the company by any challenge to the status quo, coupled with the theatre’s singular prestige, tends to lend an exaggerated importance to the minutiae of its internal affairs. The broad reality is that it has withstood the tenure of reforming administrators-general (notably Jean-Pierre Vincent and Antoine Vitez, though Jacques Lassalle might also be mentioned) and remains fundamentally the Comédie-Française. The progressive introduction of more modern and non-French drama has diluted, without destroying, its identity as the repository of the classical heritage, and without removing the impression of an institution which (perhaps properly) does not rush headlong to embrace modernity. Thus, it is perfectly possible for its supporters to claim that it has been transformed beyond recognition and for detractors to claim that the pace of change is glacial. The acquisition of a second house (the Vieux-Colombier) on the left-bank, and then the construction of a 136-seat Studio Theatre (1996) has enabled it to continue to extend the range and volume of its activity. The latter are certainly

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impressive features (commentators like to invoke the metaphor of a beehive) and are often invoked to justify the fact that the Comédie-Française receives over 40 per cent of the total sums allocated to the five National Theatres. Equally, there is often a feeling that it is impossible for the Comédie-Française to satisfy anyone, exposed as it is to criticism both when it adheres to its traditions and when it deviates from them. This may explain the paradox that at a time when France’s National Theatres have proliferated in order to reflect the plurality and diversity of their particular constituencies, its most venerable National Theatre has itself been intent on diversifying its own profile. The French National Theatre today is a multi-layered product of numerous overlapping processes. One way to summarize it would read as follows. At the start of the twentieth century, the French state owned three theatres – the Comédie-Française, the Odéon, and the Opéra. The historic and traditional character of these institutions indicates how the state at that time perceived its mandate, i.e. in terms of conserving the most culturally prestigious elements of the performing arts heritage. The twentieth century witnessed a massive expansion of the state’s cultural territory, both quantitatively and conceptually. Its field of responsibility extended first into dissemination, then to geographical and demographic penetration, in some cases associated with strivings towards a more enabling, participatory view of culture. An important impetus towards change, affecting National Theatres and the whole spectrum of théâtre public alike, was a commitment to change the distribution of cultural capital among French citizens. Extending conceptually over a period of roughly one hundred years from 1870 to 1970, and fuelling a concentrated burst of activity after 1947, this impetus enabled the TNP to serve briefly as an important site of national identity. It also resulted in an extensive nationwide system of buildings and companies which is in place today and in which the National Theatres are embedded. This infrastructure is not a straightforward product of an impulse to democratize culture but also results from a Gaullist ambition, shared by Presidents Pompidou, Mitterrand and Chirac, to build a cultural state comparable in importance to that created by Richelieu and Louis XIV, albeit one inspired by republican rather than monarchical rhetoric. That domestic ambition runs in parallel with another long-term national policy objective involving France’s external presence in the world. Impacting particularly on the National Theatres, this is currently focused on affirming France’s role within the Europe of the twenty-first century.

Notes 1. Other Regional National Theatres include Théâtre National de Marseille, Théâtre National de Bordeaux en Aquitaine, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Théâtre National de Nice, Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, etc.

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2. The expression was given widespread currency by Bernard Dort who used it with a deliberate allusion to Vilar’s advocacy of theatre considered as a public service comparable to the nationalized water and gas utilities. 3. See David Whitton (2001), pp. 53–71. 4. J-M Hordé (1997), Le Journal du Théâtre (March): 5. 5. Jack Lang (1968), L’État et le théâtre (Paris: Bibliothèque de Droit Public). 6. Lang classified the three National Theatres along two axes – repertoire and audience – using terms such as conservation/découverte/création (‘classical/dissemination of new works/creation of new works’) and théâtre de prestige/théâtre de diffusion (‘hegemonic/popular’). 7. Or, as Lang put it: ‘Ni tout à fait théâtre de prestige, ni véritablement théâtre populaire, il joue dans la vie théâtrale un role imprécis’ (Lang, op. cit., p. 115). 8. Antoine Vitez (1980), ‘Vitez on Molière: freeing the actors’, Performing Arts Journal, V (1980): 86. 9. http://www.theatre-odeon.fr/new/en/the_theatre/presentation/accueil-f-8.htm (accessed January 6, 2007). 10. Raymonde Temkine (1992), Le Théâtre en l’état (Paris: Editions Théâtrales). p. 134 (my translation). 11. David Bradby and Annie Sparks (1997), Mise en scène. French Theatre Now (London: Methuen Drama), p. 153.

13 A National Theatre Decentralized: Sweden’s Three-and-a-half National Theatres Rikard Hoogland and Willmar Sauter

A look at a Swedish theatre map shows that there are, indeed, three-and-ahalf National Theatres. The oldest one is the Royal Theatre, i.e. the Opera, founded in 1773 by King Gustavus III. The same king also established the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in 1788, although this seems to have happened more by accident. One-and-a-half centuries later, in 1934, the Swedish state started a new National Theatre, called the Swedish National Touring Theatre (Riksteatern) to provide theatrical performances all over Sweden. The latest addition to National Theatres is the National Mission for Children’s Theatre, which is a special subsidy directed towards one company at a time for a period of three years. Since 1997, four national leading theatres have been commissioned to extend their engagement with children’s theatre. It could be seen as ‘almost’ a national institution, even though it is distributed with a kind of democratic flexibility. On and off, there has also been a Norwegian Sami National Theatre, to which Sweden has contributed with performers, audiences and funds. Of course, one wonders why Sweden needs so many National Theatres, why they have been established at certain points in history, and whether they really play significant roles in Swedish theatre life. In the following, our focus will be on the development of the Swedish National Touring Theatre, since it represents a specific and unusual trend among National Theatres: it was established to decentralize the national theatre structure. Although the result of a clear cultural policy, the question arises, to what extent a decentralized national institution can be maintained. Other regional claims were competing for governmental funds and alternative artistic trends were questioning the feasibility of a national megainstitution. Furthermore, the Gustavian National Theatres are still operating today and their histories provide an extended backdrop for the evolution of these parallel, centralized and decentralized National Theatre institutions in Sweden. 164

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The Royal Theatres The Royal Opera was created by Gustavus III only two years after he came to power and one year after his coup d’état, through which he neutralized the political influence of the Swedish nobility. In other words, he was very eager to get the Opera started as quickly as possible, sending home the French theatre troupe which his mother – the sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia – had engaged at the Swedish court. Gustavus had several reasons. First of all, he was a passionate lover of theatre, who performed himself while a prince (when he became king, the court did not approve of his public appearances as an actor) and wrote libretti and plays, which were versified by his court poets. He also wanted to improve the Swedish language, and so all the international repertoire was translated into Swedish. Another reason was the international status of the Swedish court: with National Theatres in leading countries such as France and Austria, and even in Denmark, Sweden wanted to be counted among culturally advanced countries. Not least, Gustavus saw possibilities to use the operas as a political instrument: glorifying Swedish national history, promoting national identity, and stimulating military aggression towards rival neighbouring countries such as Denmark and Russia. Without going into detail, one can say that Gustavus III succeeded, at least to a certain extent. The history of the Royal Opera with its Royal Ballet is a contradictory story. His son, Gustav IV Adolf, closed the Opera in 1806, but it was reopened a few years later and endowed with the privilege of being, together with the Dramatic Theatre, the only legitimate theatres in Stockholm. This monopoly was heavily questioned and the controversy caused even a death sentence in the 1840s. Both the sentenced theatre and the Opera survived and experienced good times during the rest of the nineteenth century. In 1910, after having moved to a new building, the Opera was taken over by a private enterprise for a few years, before it was transformed into a stock company, in which the state owned all the shares. Today, the Royal Opera is the only really big opera house in the country, competing with other opera companies with smaller stages and fewer orchestra members. A national treasure? For some! For others it is a giant swallowing the major part of state subsidies. The Royal Dramatic Theatre also had a turbulent history. Established on the bankrupt ruins of a private company, its position was from the very beginning a weaker one than that of the Opera. During the nineteenth century, its very existence was questioned in parliament, again and again: why should Swedish peasants pay for the entertainment of the citizens of the capital? Finally, the king and the government withdrew their subsidies and between 1888 and 1907 the Dramatic Theatre became a private company, owned by the actors. In 1908, the state took back the company and placed it in a newly erected theatre building, the Marble Palace, which still is the home of Dramaten. This theatre became a state-owned stock company as well.

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Riksteatern The Swedish regional population finally benefited from the founding of a nationwide theatre enterprise, established by the newly elected first Social Democratic government in 1934. The main reasons for creating this theatre were the supposed low quality of the private touring theatre companies as well as continued criticism of the fact that the whole nation had to pay for cultural institutions in the capital city. The new Minister of Church, Education and Culture, Arthur Engberg, argued for this new theatre: ‘It is not only the capital of Sweden that has rightful claims to an outstanding theatre. The whole nation has the right to raise this claim.’1 Contrary to the Royal Theatres, the Swedish National Touring Theatre (Riksteatern) was not owned by the state. Instead, it was organized as a national centre of numerous local theatre associations, which arranged the performances in their cities and towns. The chairperson of Riksteatern is, however, appointed by the government. The way that the theatre was organized was in line with other national movements connected to the Social Democratic party. Even if the organization model differed from other theatres, the productions did not. The new Social Democratic government was not interested in supporting a new, working-class culture. Instead it recognized the cultural capital that had been elevated on the cultural field, i.e. the traditional cultural values were adopted from bourgeois society. The national cultural institutions that had been already established were seen as a guarantee of high quality. The working class should be educated to understand and demand traditional culture. In the beginning, Riksteatern was not a producing theatre, but was supposed to send productions from other theatres, especially from the other national theatres, on tour, so that the local theatre associations could select their repertoire. But after a few years, it started to produce its own productions, since the cooperation with other theatres proved to be too complicated. During its history, it strengthened its power through merging with other touring theatre organizations connected to the labour movement, and by prevailing against an alternative organization attached to the farmers’ movement. From its start, Riksteatern could be seen as part of Social Democratic hegemonic power. The Social Democratic Party had since then, with some short exceptions, governed the country. During the same period, Riksteatern steadily increased its activities and was named the world’s largest theatre, inspiring other countries to launch similar national touring theatres.2 Top figures were reached in the 1970/71 season, with over 60 productions and nearly 4,500 performances that were visited by more than 1.1 million spectators. This is to be compared with the Swedish population, which at that time numbered 8 million.3

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Riksteatern and the demands on decentralization Following Riksteatern’s founding in 1934, demand increased for theatre to be produced near the audiences for which it was performed. Riksteatern was a solution for distributing theatre productions all over the country, so how could it be possible for the theatre to act also as a regional theatre? In the major cities of Sweden, a number of municipal theatres were founded during the twentieth century, and in 1967 the first regional theatre, Norrbottensteatern, was launched in the northernmost part of Sweden.4 Even Riksteatern made attempts to act as a regional theatre by establishing local theatre ensembles in four towns around Sweden between 1967 and 1969. This move can be seen as a response to the demands from the Ministry of Education and Culture and the county councils. But it was also an economic and artistic improvement. It was now possible for Riksteatern to lower travelling costs and to attract new directors and actors to be part of the new ensembles. In 1968, the Minister of Education and Culture, Olof Palme, called for a committee to define the goals for a cultural policy. This was a typical move in Swedish politics. The Swedish democratic system works with committees that are appointed by the government. Such a committee has the task of producing a report with proposals concerning the political issue in question. Institutions and organizations that are concerned by the proposal are then invited to comment on the committee’s report. Thereafter, the government prepares a final proposal, which is presented to and eventually approved by, the parliament, which in turn represents numerous regional interests. The committee for a new cultural policy had the main goal of ‘increasing equality’, which was the Social Democratic buzzword of the time. The committee was also intended to propose overriding actions for such a cultural policy. A central question for the committee was to find ways of supporting new cultural institutions on a regional level, thus establishing a new national theatre structure. After four years of work, in 1972, the committee proposed that regional theatres should be launched in all of the 26 counties, managed by the counties’ and municipalities’ councils, and with economic support from the state.5 In consequence, Riksteatern should in the future provide fewer productions of its own and hand over the regional ensembles to the counties. The regular subsidies from the government to Riksteatern could therefore be reduced and instead be used to finance the new regional theatres. The grand era of Riksteatern had seemingly come to an end. The purpose of the theatre was now to be a complementary one, providing guidance to the regional theatres. How did Riksteatern defend its position? The process from the instigation of a committee to the vote in parliament is a long one, offering many opportunities of influencing the final decision. Riksteatern used its strong connections to the labour movement and the Social Democratic party

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to put pressure on the committee and the Ministry that would submit the proposal to the parliament. During the four years the committee worked, the management of Riksteatern had been approached for its expert opinion, and had ample opportunities to influence the outcome. When the committee’s investigation report was presented, Riksteatern was well prepared and could respond with a commentary consisting of 111 pages. It was not willing to step down from its central position, but was determined, instead, to increase its power. In the comments, arguments were raised that there was a need of coordination in order to avoid the same plays being produced in several places at the same time. Riksteatern offered to take this controlling position and to decide which theatre should have the right to produce which play. It was also argued that the new regional theatres should be organized and run primarily by Riksteatern (at least during the first years). Organizations connected to the labour movement supported Riksteatern in their responses. Riksteatern’s dream of a nearly monopolistic power over the Swedish theatre was never fulfilled, but in the final decision in the Swedish Parliament in 1974, the economic support to Riksteatern was increased instead of reduced.

Riksteatern survives Riksteatern has, in the ensuing decades, been politically threatened when the question was raised of whether it was worthwhile to maintain a nationwide state theatre promoting cultural decentralization when nearly all counties had their own theatres. In some of the counties, conflicts have arisen between the local branches of Riksteatern and the regional theatre. On the regional and local level, Riksteatern has associations that arrange theatre performances and are formally the owners of Riksteatern. They have sometimes had a monopoly on arranging theatre performances and they have given priority on many occasions to performances from Riksteatern over productions by the regional theatres or free theatre groups. A new governmental committee, analyzing the future of Riksteatern, confirmed its status in 1994, thus strengthening the theatre’s position.6 The conservative party in parliamentary debates several times proposed the closing down of Riksteatern, but when the party came to governmental power in September 2006, they changed their mind. Riksteatern has been receptive to the demands of the government’s cultural policy, but it has also been trying to find ways to broaden the types of theatrical performance. Since the 1960s, Riksteatern had started new ensembles to fulfil artistic or cultural policy needs. There have been specific ensembles for touring prisons, for Finnish immigrant groups, for the deaf, as well as a multicultural ensemble, and children’s theatre groups, etc. Some of the ensembles are still operating, while others have been closed down and new ones have emerged. Recently, a new production unit (named Jam) was launched that

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works with new genres such as spoken-word festivals (with monologues, readings by poets, improvized dialogues and audience participation), live role-playing,7 and performance art, introducing new forms of entertainment that are appreciated by new, and often young, audiences. Currently, Riksteatern is planning to establish a Turkish ensemble. It would not have been possible to launch many of these specialized ensembles only at regional levels, since the target audience is spread all over the country and Riksteatern is here working as a supplementary theatre. As to their artistic quality, these specialized ensembles have often been recognized and appreciated by theatre critics. However, productions for the broad adult theatre audience have often been neglected or heavily criticized for their lack of artistic quality. Words like Riksteater-actor or Riksteater-production were used as disparaging expressions. In 1997, a former Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Culture, Thomas Lyrevik, was appointed managing director of Riksteatern. Lyrevik wanted to change the overall concept of Riksteatern by reducing the company’s own productions, favouring instead co-productions with other theatre companies. He started a new production unit, Riks drama, and appointed as artistic director probably the most acclaimed contemporary Swedish playwright, Lars Norén. The beginning for Riks drama was a disaster, both in artistic and political terms. In an attempt to raise the productions of Riks drama to an experimental level, Lars Norén started out with a most controversial enterprise. He had been contacted by a group of convicts, who wanted him to write a play about their situation in prison, i.e. one of the high security prisons for highrisk inmates. Norén not only wrote the play according to the interviews he conducted with the convicts, but also allowed them to play their own parts in the production, which he directed himself. As the dramatist, he was represented by an actor on stage, while the convicts ‘performed themselves’. What made the production controversial was the fact that several of the convicts gave expression to their own Nazi-influenced opinions. The play was called 7:3, which referred to a category of prisoners who are not allowed to leave the prison due to the seriousness of their crimes. Now, these prisoners got permission to perform in Riksteatern’s regular theatres. A fierce debate started after the first night of the production in February 1999: was it reasonable to let young Neo-Nazis proclaim their weird beliefs from stage? Was this a valuable theatrical experiment? Riksteatern unanimously supported the ensemble, even after the tragic end of the run of the production. In May 1999, after the last performance, the prisoners escaped, robbed a bank and killed two policemen.8 It has taken a long time for both Lars Norén and Riks drama to re-establish confidence in their theatrical ambitions. Today it is possible to say that Riks drama is one of the highest acclaimed theatres producing a number of contemporary playwrights such as Jon Fosse, Sarah Kane, Elfride Jelinek, Lukas Bärfuss as well as Norén’s own new plays.

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Could Riksteatern survive in a regionalized and multicultural Sweden? Could it even survive if the Social Democratic hegemony in Swedish society were to fade? The answer is probably yes. It has over the decades had a long history of coexistence with a changing political and cultural landscape. Riksteatern has cleverly used its own hybridity. When needed, it has been presented either as a National Theatre or as a member-owned, independent theatre. On Riksteatern’s web page, the following description is given: ‘Riksteatern is a non-governmental organization comprising non-profit theatre associations from all over Sweden.’9 But this so called non-governmental organization is primarily subsidized by the state, with a politically appointed chairman of the board, receiving every year new governmental directives for the theatre’s activities.

The National Mission for Children’s Theatre The National Mission for Children’s Theatre is a political manifestation that children are to be taken seriously as cultural consumers or, hopefully, as partners in theatrical encounters. In a way, this step also marks the high quality of Swedish children’s theatre and the importance attributed to it. Shifting the commission from one place to another – especially outside the capital city of Stockholm – also reflects the democratic attitude towards culture which in many cases is the guiding principle of Swedish cultural politics. These theatres or theatre groups could be described as temporary or even virtual National Theatres. For a small grant, the appointed theatre should act as an example to other theatres. This theatre should demonstrate the highest level of artistic quality for children’s theatre and try out new ways of communicating with young audiences. For spreading its concept of children’s theatre, the theatre should arrange seminars and workshops. After three years, the money is withdrawn and everything goes back to the status that obtained before.

Conclusions Obviously, the functions of these National Theatres cannot be summarized in a few sentences. At any moment – both in the period of their establishment and during their subsequent history – they are exposed to and influenced by the political power centres. Sweden was not in a political or ideological crisis when all these National Theatres were established. There were no tendencies to dissolve national identities or other circumstances which would have promoted or pushed for the foundation of National Theatre institutions. On the contrary. Sweden has had and has a strong national identity, not because they had to fight for it, but because they ‘always’ had it. Compared to neighbouring countries such as Finland and Norway, Sweden has been an independent state for

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more than 500 years, with relatively stable borders (the lost provinces like Finland or parts of Germany were never considered to be ‘Swedish’) and a common language, with the exception of the language of the Sami people in the north and some other minorities around the country. National identity was not a driving force for establishing National Theatres. The interest in founding National Theatres was rather a matter of the political power centres that created them. In Gustavus’s case, there was his wish to raise the cultural level of Sweden to European standards, and to use the operas for his own political purposes. The Social Democratic government established Riksteatern to prove its concern for the regions outside the capital city and to meet the criticisms of the Opera and Dramaten in Stockholm. The National Theatres thus grew out of the needs of governments more than the needs of the people. The question is whether the National Theatres have been allowed to play a significant role in relation to the Swedish theatre world in general. In a period when most theatres cannot afford to maintain a permanent company of actors, the National Theatres are still able to do this. Due to their resources, they are able to engage a stable company of singers and dancers at the Royal Opera (with an overall staff of over 500) and to maintain an ensemble of almost 50 actors at Dramaten; and Riksteatern is also doing its best to offer the best conditions for touring actors (the expense allowances are the source of a good additional income). These conditions provide the basis of an artistic continuity which few other companies can compete with. In that sense, the National Theatres preserve certain qualities which might otherwise be lost. Are they, therefore, at the risk of becoming museums? Yes and no – there are certain tendencies towards such a conservative attitude, but at the same time all the National Theatres are ambitious to produce ‘new stuff’ – be it contemporary drama, opera and dance, or be it innovative productions of the classics. On the other hand, is there anything today which makes National Theatres ‘national’, other than the subsidies they receive from the state? Is there a nation to talk about at all when perhaps the most important decisions are taken at global, European or regional levels? Perhaps Riksteatern could be presented as equally an international, national, regional and local theatre and thus provide an accurate symbol for the Swedish nation today.

Notes 1. Teaterutredningen, SOU 1934, Stockholm 1934 (our translation). 2. For instance, see the description of Riksteatern in Verner Arpe (1969), Das schwedische Theater: von den Gauklern bis zum Happening, Stockholm. 3. Claes Englund (2003), Världens största teater : Riksteatern 1958–1976, Norsborg, p. 268. 4. The description of Riksteatern’s history is primarily based on Rikard Hoogland’s dissertation Spelet om teaterpolitiken: Det svenska regionteatersystemet från statligt

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5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

A National Theatre Decentralized: Sweden’s Three-and-a-half National Theatres initiative till local realitet [The play about theatre policy: The Swedish regional theatre structure from state initiative to local reality], Stockholm 2005. Ny kulturpolitik : Nuläge och förslag, SOU 1972:66, Stockholm 1972. Teaterns roller: betänkande av Teaterutredningen, SOU 1994:52, Stockholm 1994. ‘Role Playing’, or sometimes ‘Live Role Playing’ is a particular form of entertainment (on English web pages it may be called ‘Reality Games’ or ‘Interactive Art’). A session is announced and called for on a home page. There is a theme and there are characters; these are described in a kind of electronic script, which potential participants read and decide upon who they want to include. They will dress according to their part, think of appropriate actions and travel to the place where it happens – so no script, no director, no audience, just interactive playing by participants. For a broader account of this production, see for example Ola Johansson et al. (2001), ‘ “It’s the real thing”: Performance and Murder in Sweden’, European Review, 9, 3 (July): 319–337. http://www.riksteatern.se/templates/Undersida.aspx?id=65, visited 5 January, 2007.

14 Aspects of National Theatres in Germany after 1945 Thomas Irmer

Germany may appear as a special and somewhat paradoxical case in the context of this book. For there is no National Theatre institution, nor has there ever been one that can be compared to the role played by National Theatres in other countries as central institutions of their respective national theatre cultures. Yet, much of what is generally understood as the functions of a National Theatre can be found throughout the history of German theatre since the mid-eighteenth century, with varying concepts in sometimes rapidly changing contexts. Furthermore, it may seem paradoxical to assert the absence of a National Theatre when a quick look at the map of theatres will reveal two of them by that very name (in Weimar and Mannheim, because of their historic role in earlier periods). To put the paradox briefly: German classic dramatists, such as Lessing (with his failed attempt in Hamburg) and Schiller, dreamt of a National Theatre to enable Germany to become a nation, but the nation, united in the Empire only in 1871, continued without that concept ever being realized, up to the present day. Another aspect that combines historical concepts with contemporary affairs is the most recent debate about the role of the federal government in helping to maintain culture in the capital, Berlin. This touches deeply on the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany by which all cultural affairs must be a matter for each individual state – and not for the federal government. According to Article 30 of the Grundgesetz (Constitution), the states (Länder) of Germany are responsible for their cultural politics, generally referred to as ‘Kulturhoheit der Länder’.1 Although this provision would not prevent the possibility of a National Theatre in principle, it is certainly the main reason why there has been no National Theatre institution in Germany since 1945. Responsibilities were largely left undecided when Berlin was made the capital of a reunified Germany after 1990 – causing a mountain of structural and financial problems in the field of culture, since Berlin is a city, a state and the capital all at once (and used to be divided, with half of the city on its own and the other half as the capital of the GDR). Current debates 173

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address the changing realities of the new capital, where, for instance, museums of national importance are subsidized by the federal government, but not institutions like the opera or the theatre that would by tradition and artistic quality also qualify for that position (i.e. the Deutsche Staatsoper and the Deutsches Theater). Even though the concept of a National Theatre/Opera does not go by that name today and encounters great resistance because of the federal political system, the underlying debate is nevertheless pointing towards the question of Germany having a National Theatre – possibly for the first time and certainly lacking a clear definition of what that would entail. So the question of a National Theatre in Germany is not so much related to the cultural agenda (creating a role-model for the best of theatre culture) but rather is a matter of political structures coming out of postwar realities that had made it literally impossible as well as undesirable to create such an institution. And for today it is rather a question of whether the federal government would help to finance a specific theatre/opera that would then be privileged as the chosen theatre of the federal capital. The subject of its cultural representation or other functions remains meanwhile largely undebated. Even though this struggle for handing over the responsibility for the theatrical institutions of Berlin to the federal government may take another five or even ten years, it will be difficult in the end to consider one of them as the National Theatre/Opera as is the case in other countries.

West Germany When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, it was established as a federal system consisting of states like Lower Saxony and Bavaria, as well as municipal states like Hamburg and Bremen. West Berlin was its own entity, but it was closely connected politically and economically to the Republic. The relatively small Bonn was chosen to become the capital of this new structure. Education and culture, including the theatre industry, became a matter for the individual state authorities. This prevented the possibility of one cultural capital dominating over all the other cities and ensured the existence of several regional cultural centres. Theatre life was strong where it could reconnect with pre-1933 traditions and later contributed to the aesthetic and political changes of the 1960s and 1970s, as was the case in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich but also sometimes in less important cities (e.g. Peter Zadek’s and Peter Stein’s groundbreaking work in Bremen). West Berlin was somehow cut off but, with its traditional (Hebbel Theater) or newly-founded (Freie Volksbühne) or newly built and reorganized (Schiller Theater as a state institution) theatres, it played a distinguished role as a showcase in the Cold War, requiring more than average subsidies for the maintenance of its companies and stage houses. Berlin was indeed the place where the division created by the Iron Curtain, which also divided German theatre culture, was most dramatically to be seen. While theatre life had still

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been open to both sides of the Curtain in the years before the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961, that wasn’t the case thereafter and very little exchange took place between the two sides for the next 15 or 20 years. The question of a National Theatre institution was hardly ever raised in West Germany, where it was never on a political agenda or the objective of cultural politics. On the one hand, there was no need for it as it had never existed and would have been something different from the tradition of the diversified landscape of state-based, municipal and other public-funded theatres. On the other hand, there was deep distrust for the idea of a national institution that would be the official leading institution of a culture that had been cut in half and which should represent the nation. The question of whether there was still one German culture (under two different political systems) or whether ultimately there would be two different cultures emerging (with only the language and the past in common) was a debate from the 1950s onwards and of course also affected the theatre, its professional employees and its audience. That there was no great desire for a national culture to be represented in a National Theatre can also be explained by the general attitude of West German theatre makers since the 1960s, that there was a German culture but no national culture that could integrate the political realities of the two Germanies. This was also a way of avoiding confusion between national and nationalist culture. Additionally, everything ‘national’ appeared to be suspicious after the catastrophe of National Socialism as fascism. Despite all this, many playwrights and directors who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s were heavily concerned with questions of the German past and its responsibilities, and hence also with political questions about the present and the presence of the ‘other’ German nation-state whose émigré artists played a growing role in West German theatre from the mid-1970s onwards. Yet, a programmatic National Theatre – as was the case in eighteenth-century Germany with its various kingdoms and smaller entities – did not play a role, nor the idea of an institution devoted to this. As if to prove this, Adolf Dresen, a director from East Berlin’s Deutsches Theater failed in his attempt to encourage the idea of a new German National Theatre in 1981–85 in Frankfurt/Main. As the artistic director, he stated that he was concerned with the National Theatre and its traditions, and not with a national culture or state. The public, and likewise the authorities, found that to be an almost deviant concept: a National Theatre in a sort of postnational culture. But Dresen’s ideas were symptomatic of a culture otherwise divided: not only between East and West but between the traditions and the more or less deliberate erasure of those traditions that draw memory from literature, history and therefore theatre. Thus the present prevailed with ever more new artistic forms and fashions, replacing the old without much sense of historical consciousness. Adolf Dresen may be seen as a special case with his aesthetic and political opposition to prevailing trends in

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both his home countries. He aimed for a theatre that would treat the issues concerning the general public (including the realities of the greater public in East and West Germany), and he wanted to build a long-lasting ensemble that would develop the artistic potential of the company – like his forefathers in the eighteenth century. In the end, his failed attempt was an indictment of the state of the (West) German theatre system where the artistry of theatre directors (Regietheater) had overshadowed political content and literary traditions, where the idea of ensembles was about to disappear, and where a programme to research national traditions on the stage encountered lack of interest and disbelief.2 This, of course, is an example of how the idea of a National Theatre seemed outdated not only as an institution but far more as an artistic organization, and even more so as an ideal. Dresen’s case may be seen in the context of the early 1980s when German reunification seemed as far away as a landing on Mars. But it also shows how far the mentality of German theatre culture had gone from the ideas of a National Theatre. It simply didn’t identify with it. Driven by the artistic competition of directors and actors in a national league that had replaced the idea of a National Theatre, this has now become the postmodern forum of German theatre: a sort of bundesliga (national league) cup for the best production of the season, and not the public arena to build and educate a nation that Lessing, Schiller and Dresen dreamt of. In such circumstances why should the government choose one particular team to become the recipient of a permanent silver trophy?3

East Germany Rooted in the same postwar situation and sharing similar conditions to their fellows in the Western occupied zones, people under Soviet military authority were quickly able to go to shows, which were strongly supported even by the Russians in East Berlin and East Germany. Using culture as a tool for rebuilding, and at the same time preparing for Soviet rule, some Russian officials had a high respect for German theatre culture and were eager to reopen the theatres which had been destroyed in many cities. The most prominent case was the reopening in September 1945 of the Deutsches Theater, which had been led by Max Reinhardt in the 1910s and 1920s, and was now located in the Soviet sector of Berlin and which was regarded by most people as the most important theatre in all of Berlin. The rebuilding of cultural institutions in the former capital may be considered as one of the constructive aspects of the early Cold War, as the vengeful Soviet politics of removing much of the industrial structure in East Germany (including even the railway tracks) reveals. Yet, there was no attempt in the years from 1945 to 1949 to establish one of the reopened theatres as the National Theatre institution. German theatre professionals, among them many returning emigrants, did not thirst for such an institution either. On the one hand,

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all aspects of ‘national’ ideas were under various types of examination. On the other hand, the process of rebuilding theatre culture was itself difficult enough under the circumstances.4 When the German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949, the development of its culture should have had a more significant role after the years under Soviet occupation. The German communist rulers favoured a mixture of old bourgeois culture and new (communist) politically determined arts. In the case of the theatre it was the revival of the old institution with new contents, as an educational tool featuring the classics as well as propagandist playwrights. This was exactly what Brecht defied, for he wanted theatre to be a completely new institution to see what a new society could make of it. Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble was, between 1948 and 1956, certainly closer to something like a new National Theatre than the theatres that only would try to revive the traditional work of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. Brecht believed in an alliance against warfare and encouraged anti-militarism. The later Cold War ideological dialectic (between the superpowers) was alien to him, as were so many countries of his exile before. Given this, the Berliner Ensemble, however, can be seen as the first National Theatre in postwar Germany, in function, though not in name. During the years 1948–56, Brecht’s actual theatre work was created for all of postwar Germany, not just for a segment of the population. And there was no other National Theatre at this time. Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater, where Brecht first resided with his Ensemble until 1953, was to become the leading theatre after Brecht’s death, and the most flourishing institution from the 1960s to the 1980s.The Deutsches Theater was regarded as the superior institution in the GDR, but strangely enough, however, neither the government that provided propaganda for the new socialist state culture nor the theatre artists with their reservations against such preoccupation would establish the Deutsches Theater as the National Theatre institution, at least not officially.5 Cultural life in the GDR had in general a much greater orientation towards its capital, compared to the situation in the Federal Republic of Germany. And, as mentioned before, Berlin was a very special case of cultural Cold War competition.

Conclusion: after 1990 – Germany reunified In a way, one could state that the large landscape of the extremely diversified German theatre culture can be understood as the National Theatre – without a central institution. Such understanding would allow for the fact that many theatres of different kinds and regions contribute to the project of national theatre as a specific item of German national culture. This may be enhanced, or demonstrated, by attempts of German politicians of the recent past to make the German theatre system a unique achievement to be protected with listing in the UNESCO world heritage. Ultimately paradoxical, the German

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theatre heritage of outstanding regional establishments stems from an ambitious aristocratic culture before the nation, whereas today’s federal culture celebrates its theatrical riches in a post-national mode. Furthermore, where once the ideal of a nation was pursued by theatre artists and playwrights to build and educate this nation, it is now, mostly, a theatre that reflects on conditions of individual identities beyond (or below) national matters and does almost nothing to develop the canon after the last revolution of the 1920s. Germany consists of a changing hybrid population, including a mainstream with post-nationalist ideas, as well as major immigrant groups, and some nationalist extremists: a motley crew with some real problems. It is on that level very difficult, aside from organizational or structural features, to determine what German theatre as a national issue is. Schiller said about 200 years ago: ‘We will have a national theatre, or none.’ We have none, but a theatre of many. And if a National Theatre is to be organized, for theatre or opera in the capital, in the near future, the mainly financial pressures cannot explain its actual function in this changing national culture. In theatre, it has often been like this for German audiences who do not seek only such an all-encompassing one-nation ideology. Very agreeably so. Thus, it may be explained that the absence of a national institution was certainly no reason to prevent what flourished in both East and West German theatre life after the war. It remains, however, to further examine the consequences from the division of Germany into two separate cultures, why their reunification would not allow for a National Theatre as such. First, there was no obvious candidate for such a theatre. Second, the agenda at the time was not clear. Third, the political powers would not allow it. Last but not least, it was impossible to ‘re-establish’ it, as it did not exist as such before. Fifth and above all, the idea of ‘nation’ was out. To invoke Schiller once more: We have theatre, and a nation. Both in the process of becoming.

Notes 1. The article reads: ‘Die Ausübung der staatlichen Befugnisse und die Erfüllung der staatlichen Aufgaben ist Sache der Länder.’ (The exercise of state-related power and the fulfilment of state-related objectives is a matter of the states.) This article is the main basis for the ‘Kulturhoheit’ (full responsibility for culture). 2. Cf Adolf Dresen (2000), Wieviel Freiheit braucht die Kunst? Reden Briefe Verse Spiele, ed. Maik Hamburger (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, pp. 214–50). In particular the letter of his resignation from his position as artistic director contains remarks about the fundamental misunderstanding of his ideas for a National Theatre (pp. 219–21). 3. There is indeed such annual ranking of the best theatre of the German-speaking countries. Organized by the influential monthly Theater heute, some 40 critics vote on the different categories of theatrical achievement, among them the best theatre of the season. Even though this is a constant issue of debate and seen as a questionable competition, it certainly has contributed to a situation in which a National Theatre may appear as obsolete.

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4. Yet there was the initial concept for a National Theatre developed by communist German theatre emigrés in Moscow that they tried to establish on their return. For a discussion, see Petra Stuber (1998), Spielsraüme und Grenzen (Berlin: Links). 5. The history of Deutsches Theater is accurately presented with various documents in Alexander Weigel (1999), Das Deutsche Theater, ed. Deutsches Theater, published by Propyläen. This book also discusses critically the term ‘Staatstheater der DDR’, as the theatre was officially named after 1949, and which definitely has some functional proximity to the role of a National Theatre. Again, under the given circumstances, one must not confuse this with the widely accepted concept of the term.

15 The National Theatre and Civic Responsibility in the British Isles Michael Coveney

The pulse of our nation is now most potently registered in its television iconography: the endless ‘reality’ shows featuring sad, wannabe celebrities; the facile rudeness of judges on amateur talent shows; the trite coarseness of the soaps embracing social decay and ignorance. At the same time, we can attest the disintegration of any true notion of service to the state in cultural affairs or public broadcasting. Funnily enough, I believe this condition of cultural apathy and decline sharpens up the possibilities of the theatre. In any discussion of what is ‘national’ in the National Theatre of Great Britain (which must be distinguished from the National Theatre of Ireland at the Abbey in Dublin, and the newly formed National Theatre of Scotland with offices in Glasgow) we can see the function of live performance as a chance to redress the balance, fight for artistic and civic virtue, as well as reflect the faults and failures of our society. This, I believe, is happening. And it is happening most notably at the National Theatre, which was established in 1962 with Laurence Olivier, the greatest English actor of the last century, as its first artistic director. Olivier represented many important strands at once in his tenure: the tradition of great acting from David Garrick and Edmund Kean through Henry Irving to John Gielgud and himself; a curiosity about the contemporary postwar theatre (he himself had played one of his greatest roles, Archie Rice, in John Osborne’s The Entertainer in 1958) in an age of imperial decline; and a profound belief that a life in the theatre had a social and civic purpose, that audiences should be transformed in their communities by the power and seriousness of theatrical art. The advent of serious television drama, especially at the BBC when embodying the high moral and educational principles of Lord Reith, one of its most influential director generals, could be seen as an adjunct to this campaign of Olivier at the NT. There even came a time in the 1960s when contemporary drama seemed more pertinent on television than it did in the theatre. Now the situation is reversed. Television drama, with several but not too many exceptions, is definitely a poor relation today to the theatre. 180

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Theatre has relocated its own voice as a place of tribunal, debate, dissent and indeed celebration. You could also argue that the true ‘National Theatre’ of Britain in the past twenty years has been the enormous metropolitan and touring popularity of the blockbuster musicals – Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon – rather than the high-minded plays at the Royal Court and the National Theatre. But just as the National Theatre was conceived a century ago as a safety net for ‘serious’ work against the encroachment of the commercial theatre, so the sheer pace of change in our society, as well as the renewed sense of civic responsibility in several influential figures – notably the directors Nicholas Hytner (artistic director of the National), Max StaffordClark (of the touring Out of Joint company), and Nicolas Kent (of the small Tricycle Theatre in North London, which has staged a series of tribunal plays on the subject of the British government’s arms enquiry into Iraq and the detention of prisoners without trial in Guantanamo Bay) – means that the theatre can be seen as a natural place to debate the nation’s sense of itself. Interestingly, this process always seems to be self-critical and at odds with the political certainties that fuelled the initial ‘patriotic’ concept. This characteristic of the National Theatre has come into even sharper focus since the war in Iraq. Announcing his new NT season in early 2006, Nicholas Hytner said that the programme would focus on the clash between reason and unreason, secular thinking and religious faith, a subject he believes to be the most urgent theme of the moment. ‘I’ve not yet had a single play about Muslim fundamentalism’, he said, ‘but it will come. At some point it seems to me that a Muslim woman will write about how hard it is to be a Muslim woman and British. If it is good, we will put it on.’1 Three years ago, Hytner declared his hand with a thrilling production of Henry V – the archetypal English ‘national’ play – and cast a black monarch fighting a war on foreign soil with an instant media feedback on a battery of screens and microphones. The play reflected anxieties about the initiative in Iraq while reinventing Shakespeare’s king as a modern leader whose justifications for going to war – that is, the way in which he analysed his motives – were as important as his resolve to carry them through. Almost as a mirror image of this, Hytner presented Jerry Springer – The Opera, an outrageously scabrous musical setting of the American television talk show with sexual deviants and fetishists, backed by a full choir (the television studio audience), screaming their obscenities and complaints in the musical language of high, Handelian baroque. My only real complaint about Jerry Springer (apart from its frailty of construction and nauseating air of radical piety) was that it wasn’t sufficiently or savagely analytical of the new phenomenon of the television chat show as a confessional process for the nation, a sort of new religion with false idols, the downside of our ‘special relationship’ with America.

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A national theatre now, which is a concept I imagine Hytner and his colleagues feel more at home with than that of a National Theatre, has a duty to look both inwards and outwards. A national theatre is concerned with reacting to the world outside as much as to its own sense of responsibility towards the repertoire. A National Theatre suggests an awareness of status that Hytner and his team have persistently challenged in their artistic priorities such as those two productions of Jerry Springer and Henry V. They went one step further in the following year, 2004, when Hytner commissioned the playwright David Hare to write a modern history play, using the Shakespearean model, on the preparations for the Iraq war. The result, Stuff Happens – the play’s title comes from a quote by Donald Rumsfeld about the looting of Baghdad – mixed snippets of real, researched dialogue with long passages of invented conversation between a cast of real-life characters – the dramatic triangle at the heart of the play was formed by George Bush, Tony Blair and (a character of almost tragic dimensions) Colin Powell – without any resort to cartoon-like impersonation. Just before the play opened in New York, Hare made it clear that although he wanted to see more dissent in the American theatre about the war being fought, in order to reflect the dispute in the nation, he in fact ‘wanted to write the story of how a supposedly stupid man completely gets his way with two supposedly clever men. And wins repeatedly.’2 As Bush did with Blair and Powell. A play such as this, controversial and clever, might not have been inconceivable in Olivier’s time, at the outset of the National Theatre more than forty years ago, but its extraordinary ‘aliveness’ as a dramatic document of what people were talking about in their homes was something relatively new in recent British theatre. For even though Olivier’s right-hand man and dramaturg, the critic Kenneth Tynan, occasionally tried to steer the ship into choppy waters of controversy, he never really succeeded. This conflict between how a National Theatre saw itself and how its own artists operated surfaced towards the end of Peter Hall’s reign (Hall, having entrusted the RSC to Trevor Nunn in 1968, succeeded Olivier in 1973 and worked valiantly in steering the NT from the Old Vic into the new building on the South Bank in 1976), when an outgoing chairman acquired in 1988 a royal patent – the theatre was renamed the Royal National Theatre. Almost immediately, the incoming artistic director, Richard Eyre, produced a double-bill of plays by Alan Bennett that represented, not too unkindly, the reigning monarch on her own stage; in a conversation with the art historian Anthony Blunt (later revealed to be a spy), Her Majesty confused Poussin the painter with poussin the chicken for lunch before raising the issue of her own portrait: ‘Well, one Minister of the Arts wanted to loose Francis Bacon on me … He did the Screaming Pope, didn’t he? I suppose I would have been the Screaming Queen.’3 When he ran the National, Olivier was undoubtedly a national hero and he brilliantly absorbed the shock of the new into the conservative dignity of his

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office and the propriety of a great national institution. For ten years, he and his collaborators celebrated the end of a raffish, Bohemian era in the British theatre; ‘the end’, said the actor and writer Simon Callow, who first worked at the Old Vic as an assistant in the box office, ‘of heroic efforts waged against impossible odds. From now on, it was no more Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends, or Cry God for Larry, England and St George, now it was the theatre as a serious, responsible enterprise, run on sound business principles, properly endowed, systematically engaging with the theatre of the past and the present.’4 One of Olivier’s greatest triumphs at the National, which he ran at the Old Vic from 1963, was his swaggering, sulphurous interpretation of Othello, probably the last great romantic performance of our day. When, on his and Desdemona’s deathbed, Othello proudly declared that he had done the State some service, the audience recognized both actor and character in the words. Such a boast used to be common among all people in the arts, and it was a key motivation behind the founding of the National Theatre. In a famous essay5 after the Comédie-Française had visited Britain in 1879, the poet Matthew Arnold provided a slogan for National Theatre campaigners – ‘The theatre is irresistible: organize the theatre!’ – as, simultaneously, Henry Irving, the first British actor to be knighted, embarked on his managerial glory days at the Lyceum Theatre. As the critic Richard Findlater wrote, ‘The accessibility of the classics and the survival of the acting tradition were threatened by the emergence of the entertainment industry, with its economic dependence on long runs and their provincial tours.’6 When Irving died in 1904, the National Theatre campaign began in earnest, coincidentally just as the Abbey Theatre in Dublin was created as Ireland’s National Theatre in the great artistic and political renaissance of that country. Britain’s National Theatre was not so inevitably inspired. It came about, slowly, because of the advocacy of a permanent, serious non-commercial theatre by practitioners including Irving, J. M. Barrie, Arthur Wing Pinero and George Bernard Shaw (who was, of course, an Irishman). Two world wars held things up and an Act of Parliament, enabling subsidy to be granted to a proposed National Theatre, was at last passed in 1949. Still no theatre was built. The first National, under Olivier, was founded to be a stock of world drama and a company of great actors. This held true for a short while, but the mission was challenged from the start by the foundation of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960, somehow stealing Olivier’s thunder (he quickly reclaimed it) and clearly hi-jacking one of the principal tasks of the National, the celebration of the national poet, William Shakespeare. It seems odd now to recall the antagonism between the upstart RSC and the establishment of the National, but the RSC was fired by the ambition of a director even more visionary than Olivier, Peter Hall, who transformed the annual Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon into the basis of a modern company based in both Stratford and London.

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Things were a little different at the Abbey, whose early years were marked by political controversy and even riots. Yeats and Lady Gregory were the inspiration behind the Abbey, their dreams financed by a high-minded English tea heiress, Annie Horniman in 1904. That year saw not only the death of Irving, but the premiere of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Moscow and the first season of plays at the Royal Court in London – then simply known as the Court – presented by Harley Granville Barker and John Vedrenne. Within three years the Court had established the reputation of Bernard Shaw, and given London its first international repertory programme, with plays by Ibsen, Schnitzler, Maeterlinck and Yeats. Ironically, Miss Horniman loathed Irish nationalism, and she fell out with the Abbey directors when they refused to close the theatre as a mark of respect to the dead King Edward VII in 1910. She promptly withdrew her support, but by then her work was done and she had already financed England’s very first repertory theatre, the Gaiety in Manchester, which she bought and refurbished in 1908. The Abbey did close during the Easter Rising of 1916 and struggled to survive until it became the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world in 1924. And, as such, its function was clear: to promote the best of new Irish playwriting and produce the best of the world repertoire. So, while the National ideal languished in a void of non-action in the first half of the twentieth century, the ‘national theatre’ in the wider sense of the nation’s variety of theatre was prosecuted in the example of determined individuals setting off a civic response around them. One prominent touring manager in the Victorian theatre, Alfred Wareing, was inspired by Miss Horniman’s Abbey, for whom he arranged a tour to Glasgow. There, spotting a gap in the market, he proposed a citizens’ company funded by public subscription, rather than by private benefactions. His Glasgow Repertory Theatre opened in 1909 and led, eventually, to the formation of the Scottish National Players in 1921 and the founding by the Scottish playwright James Bridie of the Citizens Theatre, the new Glasgow Repertory Theatre, in 1943. While James Bridie’s Citizens purported to be a Scottish theatre, most of his better plays were soon farmed out to the West End in London. The case of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), which was launched at the start of 2006, is particularly interesting. Whom does it represent, what are its aims, where does it reside? Like the NT – no longer known as the ‘Royal’ NT – in London,7 it was a long time coming and decided in the end on a nebulous ‘all things to all men’ policy, without a home base and without a permanent company (except for six actors who rush around the country setting up workshops). There were hints of a Scottish National Theatre in Bridie’s Citizens, in Clive Perry’s and Bill Bryden’s regime at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in the 1970s, and in many nationalist plays, notably Sir Robert Lindsay’s medieval Ane Satire of the Thrie Estaites, presented at countless Edinburgh Festivals. But the modern Scottish theatre seemed liveliest in touring companies like

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John McGrath’s 7:84 company (so named because of an ancient statistic in The Economist magazine which claimed that seven per cent of the country owned 84 per cent of the wealth), or its offshoots, or sporadically in theatres like the Pitlochry or Dundee Reps and, consistently over the past forty years, at the informal, internationally-minded Traverse in Edinburgh. The late John McGrath (he died in 2002), in fact, once expressed a vaguely Marxist view of what theatre can achieve that most Scottish theatre practitioners would still accept: ‘The theatre can never cause social change. It can articulate the pressure towards one, help people to celebrate their strengths and maybe build their self-confidence. It can be a public emblem of inner, and outer, events, and occasionally, a reminder, an elbow-jogger a perspective-bringer. Above all, it can be the way people find their voice, their solidarity and their collective determination.’8 In its manifesto, the new NTS echoes many of these sentiments, resisting the temptation to make any jingoistic, patriotic stab at defining a nation’s identity but hoping to throw open the doors of possibility. The NTS, in other words, is an enabling agency of some kind. Its modest annual subsidy of £4 million goes towards already established groups and theatres in a concerted effort of collaboration, touring and site-specific projects. So, on one Saturday night in March 2006, the NTS entered the world with a series of nationwide events all called Home (‘the most evocative word in our language’, it was claimed). There was a puppet show in a disused shop in Stornoway, a high-energy performance in a former Nissen hut near Inverness, a reworking of the Hansel and Gretel story on the East Lothian coast, an occupation of derelict flats in Aberdeen, a karaoke Abba night in a grand ballroom in Dundee, and an abseil down a tower block in Glasgow. The NTS cannot in itself revitalize a Scottish classical tradition, nor produce large-scale new work likely to enter the world repertoire, but the latest signs of development are highly encouraging. At the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, the NTS scored two resounding successes with new work by Scottish playwrights Gregory Burke and Anthony Neilson. Burke’s Black Watch was a mesmerizing ‘unofficial’ history of the famous Black Watch regiment recently amalgamated in the new Scottish Regiment, using documentary and physical theatre techniques in a text-based production that summarized and complemented the earlier nationalist work of both Bill Bryden and John McGrath; while Neilson’s Realism was a day in the life of an Oblomov-style self-obsessed recluse, exploding into a large-scale surreal production of great visual beauty. The National under Hytner is undoubtedly set to conquer the world in a way quite different from Olivier’s triumphs or even the best of the Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn eras. Hytner is hoovering up the best of new British playwriting – incidentally leaving the Royal Court with a sparse-looking agenda – as well as expressing the theatre’s political conscience in a way that has not been done in London theatre since the formative, radical years of the RSC in the mid 1960s. The whole idea of a National Theatre as a distinguished

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receptacle of the Great and the Good in World Theatre has been quietly dismantled, and today’s practitioners – in England, Scotland and Ireland – are attempting to raise their voices of civic responsibility on behalf of their audiences in a dominant culture of narcissism and contempt.

Notes 1. As reported in The Stage, 23 February 2006 2. As reported in the New York Times, 26 March 2006 3. Alan Bennett (1998), A Question of Attribution in Alan Bennett: Plays Two (London: Faber and Faber). 4. Simon Callow (1997). 5. Matthew Arnold. ([1879] 1973). 6. Richard Findlater, ‘The Winding Road to King’s Reach’ in Callow, op.cit. 7. Nicholas Hytner dropped ‘The Royal’ at the start of his tenure, so that although ‘The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain’ remains that for purposes of its charitable status, the title has slipped in usage and on all publicity material back to ‘National Theatre’, expressing what seems to be a general preference. 8. John McGrath (1974).

II

Central and Eastern Europe

16 Bulgarian National Theatre ‘Ivan Vazov’: Traditionally Non-traditional Kalina Stefanova

Long live the National! Isn’t it outrageous: we stand up for the rights of all groups of interests and minorities, while, at the same time, the rights and interests of the nations, especially the small-size ones, get more and more overlooked! As if in the context of the ‘global village’ separate nations aren’t actually mere minorities! What’s more, the national tends to get mixed up with the nationalistic, i.e. it gets loaded with an outright negative connotation. Therefore: hats off to Sterijno Pozorje Festival in Novi Sad (Serbia) for the topic of its 2006 Symposium – National Theatres and Nationalistic Theatre – which put an emphasis on the difference between these two concepts! The difference, for me, lies in the demarcation line between the political and the cultural: the first has to do with the nationalistic, while the national dwells in the domain of the latter. Moreover, isn’t the national one of the few refuges for cultural identity in the globalizing world? Especially compared with the identity amnesia instigated by national nihilism! I’d dare go even further and say that the national is, to an extent, also a repository of humanity, as opposed to the dehumanizing and face-erasing effect of the transnational and corporate-serving phenomenon of consumerism-withoutborders. All that applied to the theatre makes it clear that I don’t consider the idea of having National Theatres as old-fashioned and totally depleted. Of course, there are some National Theatres whose repertoires are replete with boring, uninventive, same-stuff shows. But isn’t a considerable part of the avant-garde theatre in an impasse too or even in a constant state of repetition of itself? Thank goodness, in both cases there are plenty of examples of the opposite. Why shouldn’t such examples count, then, when it comes to the cause of the National Theatres, as they very well do in the case of the avant-garde? Luckily, the Bulgarian National Theatre is among these examples. What’s more, it’s the leading and most sought out theatre in the country nowadays. 188

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And it has been so in the course of the last nearly 15 years, an extraordinary achievement, considering the very difficult times for culture in Bulgaria, and considering also that, although having held such a venerable position during many periods in its more-than-100-year history, the National Theatre couldn’t boast that it had the same leading role for quite a time before 1989. How did that reversal of fortune happen?

From the ‘king’s fool’ to a forgotten pauper Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, theatre in Bulgaria, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, enjoyed not only generous state funding but also a unique kind of relationship with its audience. There was a special whiff of conspiracy between the stage and the hall. So as to circumvent censorship, theatre had mastered to perfection an Aesopian language and could say almost anything, unlike most of the arts. This made the stage all the more important and sought-out as a medium. Although very ingenious, the metaphors of the Aesopian language were, of course, clear to everybody, including the authorities. So it seems now that the theatre at that time had been somehow tacitly authorized to be an outlet for social tensions – something like the king’s fool who’s allowed to say anything – which doesn’t in the least belittle its importance. However, when the Iron Curtain was finally removed, theatre ceased overnight to be everybody’s darling: suddenly the streets were full of people shouting openly what theatre had so far carefully disguised behind its masks and, shortly afterwards, it was clear that the big ‘Happening’ out there, as well as in the parliament and on TV and radio, had inexorably stolen the show. The real blow came later, though, when life was restored to order and the audience continued to ignore the stage. For nearly two years Bulgarian theatres stayed almost empty. It was during their subsequent search for ways to create a new need for communication with the stage that the recent rise of the National Theatre began.

A weight-loss strategy for a start (and to stick to) While most other theatres tried to lure the audience back simply by offering it a new repertoire (plays which were banned or simply shied away from before 1989), along with that new repertoire the National focused on a painful but much needed structural reform. It certainly helped that several years before 1989 the company had undergone a significant cut – 32 elderly actors had retired. Yet, in 1990, the new head of the theatre, Dr Vassil Stefanov, a critic by profession, still found that the National had a staff which was too huge for its needs. ‘One of the ways to change the direction a theatre is heading to’, he said, ‘is to get it freed from big groups of ageing actors because it’s they, generally, who are the main conservative force in there.’1 And so he

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did – twice in his subsequent reign (which continues until today, with the exception of three years at the turn of the century). As a result of this, he brought the actors’ staff down from 86 to 40 – ‘the real number of people needed to carry the core of the repertoire’. He also implemented the contract system (practised until then exclusively by the only theatre in Bulgaria without a permanent company, Theatre 199). In this way the company gets supplemented by an additional 20 to 40 guest-actors per year. ‘I was fully aware of the fact that it was not a question of changing the repertoire’, says Stefanov, ‘but of changing the heads where the ideas are being bred.’ So, not only was the company cut but it was also invigorated and literally rejuvenated. Now the National has the strongest group of young actors in the country. It’s also the most popular one: ‘The faces featured in the lifestyle magazines are mostly of our actors’, says Nikola Vandov, head of bibliography and archive at the theatre. Another drastic change Stefanov made, although much more gradually and actually without having planned it in the very beginning, was to discharge the traditionally maintained groups of staff directors and set-designers (usually consisting of about three professionals in each of them) and rely on guests ‘by invitation’ instead. Now there is only one director on the staff. A literary bureau of three dramaturges stays intact as a number. The rest of the 151 staff work predominantly in the many ateliers and in the administration. ‘The manner of chairing the theatre had to be changed: from someone who had to make sure no ideological mistake was made, the head of the theatre had to become a manager, an entrepreneur’, summarizes Stefanov. This strategy proved really successful and by the mid 1990s the National had already become the most dynamic theatre in the country. Naturally, as a result of all that, it was the first one not only to bring the audience back but to steadily keep it. Which was, of course, due also to the artistic moves the theatre undertook.

A stylish diversity instead of one signature style In 1992 a seemingly unlucky turn of events changed substantially the future of the National Theatre. The first studio theatre in Bulgaria SFUMATO – built on the principle of the theatre colony and following a rigorous, although not always audience-friendly, aesthetic of austerity-meets-high-art – remained homeless. The National offered the company a shelter and its smallest (third) stage, and they stayed under one roof for the next four years. The two heads of SFUMATO, M. Mladenova and I. Dobchev, both famous directors of the middle generation, were also invited to put on shows on the two other stages (the big one and the chamber one). This coexistence with the then most avant-garde company brought to the National a totally different aesthetic and consequently another type of audience as well. Also, the symbiosis proved to be a catalyst for the

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aforementioned directorial change and the subsequent opening-up of the National to a whole range of diverse signature styles. Part of the theatre’s company, including the whole group of staff directors, threatened to resign in protest against the ‘tenant’. Unexpectedly the resignation was accepted, so the rest of the company, including Dr. Stefanov, were given carte blanche to further extend the hospitality and to continue with the concurrent artistic experiments. No matter how open to directorial styles the National has been throughout its history, it had also invariably been a ‘reserved terrain’ for two or three major directors at a time, up to that point. From then on it started inviting all talented directors in the country, including students who had not yet graduated from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA) but who had already built a reputation, such as G.Stoev, or later on, famous experimenters such as L. Abadjieva, T. Moskov, and V. Viharova. At the same time the National did not turn its back on the older directors with a renowned ‘classical’ approach, such as L. Daniel, K. Spasov, Pl. Markov, and N. Lambrev: ‘I find it difficult to name a revered director who has not been invited to stage here in the course of all these years and under the best possible conditions our country’s theatre landscape could offer today’, said Vandov. ‘If someone is a name, he or she has to direct here’, added Alexander Jekov, the administrative head of the National. In 1994, though, one director clearly stood out among the others: Alexander Morfov caused a furore with his Don Quixote. All his shows from then on became sold-out hits, transforming him into a cult figure with a huge following of his own, primarily among young audiences. Later on he became artistic director of the theatre for a year (1999/2000). Despite all that, and although he has been ever since the only director on the staff there, the National held to its new success formula of a theatre which does not want to belong to or be associated with one director: ‘He is a phenomenon in Bulgarian theatre, so he has to stage here but the National should not be the “theatre of Morfov”, as it was about to become’, says Jekov.

A new drama-meets-puppetry theatre reality Morfov was the first graduate of the puppetry department at the NATFA (having majored in both puppetry acting and directing) who was invited to direct at the National. About the same time (in the first half of the 1990s) a whole group of six or seven actors, also puppetry graduates, became members of the National’s company. Together with them he created a new type of spectacle not seen before then in Bulgarian theatre and based on a symbiosis of puppetry and drama. Huge puppets appeared on stage in Don Quixote. But it was not only a matter of the mere presence of puppets among the live actors; it was a whole different acting and directing approach that was applied by Morfov and his cast. The play was handled in a more playful, openly carnival

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style, freed from the canon of the psychological theatre and the Method. The actors were making the objects on stage come to life, as it is done in the puppet theatre; and vice versa, characters at times acted in a puppet-like manner. The drama and puppetry melted into a third something which made the stage acquire magical, fairy-tale dimensions, yet without losing the connotations of the text. Of course, Don Quixote, with its mixture of dreams and reality, illusions-come-true and mirage-like transformations, was the perfect springboard for that new aesthetic, but it worked impeccably and invariably in all the subsequent shows that Morfov directed too. It is worth pointing out that at about the same time several more puppetry graduates started working in the drama theatres, exploring an aesthetic based on a coexistence of the two arts. The time was simply ripe for that. The need for more and newer imagery was obviously dictated not least by the huge influx of modernity which literally inundated our life. The new theatre reality created by Morfov and his team and instantly loved by the audiences had a revolutionary effect on the whole Bulgarian stage for one more reason. It is in the genes of Bulgarian theatre that the stage is not a place for frivolous fun, that theatre is a serious endeavour with the primary task of a Teacher. Anything where entertainment prevails over philosophy – and this includes pure spectacle too – has rarely been considered of merit. Morfov managed to show that theatre could be incredible fun and pure magic, and yet speak seriously to the audience. It was not by chance that the carnival face of the theatre, the Spectacle, made its grand, although belated, appearance on the drama stage helped precisely by means of the expression of puppetry and the artists who came out of this mould. Bulgarian puppet theatre has always been very spectacular and modern: ‘In the ‘60s and the ‘70s it was far more interesting than the drama theatre’, says Stefanov, who worked then in that field too. ‘It was much more image-related. Especially the puppet theatre for adults was doing very interesting stuff. There was no way for that kind of expressiveness to be transferred to the big stages at the time. But our long relationship with the puppet theatre became a bridge which helped many puppetry graduates enter the National’s company.’ There is another way of making the point: since it was the National who gave Morfov the chance, undoubtedly, a big part of the credit should go to it as well. Moreover, the new trend saw the light of day way before The Lion King made puppets the fashion on Broadway! And as on Broadway, the audiences went berserk. Since then all Morfov shows have been sold-out hits.

Sold-out hits This does not apply to Morfov’s shows only! The National, along with Theatre 199, is the audience’s favourite and, naturally, it is the champion in box-office revenues: 60 per cent of its budget (the equivalent of 400,000 euros for 2006)

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is provided by the state and is spent on utilities and salaries; the other 40 per cent (equal to 300,000 euros) – i.e. the money for production expenses – comes from the box-office. ‘Theatre rediscovered its innate nature as an adventure and a game’, says Vandov. ‘It became interesting: what will be the next thing in the National?! This kind of suspense appeals to the audience. People know that coming here they are to see something unexpected. They know that most likely a surprise is in store for them. And in most cases the surprises are pleasant. There are good shows in other theatres too. But they are more of an exception there, whereas, here this is close to a rule.’ This paradoxical regularity of surprises comes not only from the so-to-speak ‘quality guarantee’ which the audiences nowadays have come to associate with the National but also from the approach to classics usually offered there. It was again Morfov who played the role of an agent provocateur: ‘He put his hand into the classics’, says Stefanov, ‘and modernized it in a pure theatrical way.’ Of course, it is questionable whether the overall result has been entirely positive, especially from a long-term perspective. However, by turning the classical plays upside down (i.e. by cutting, rewriting, and making collages out of them) Morfov certainly made them appealing to the young audiences of today. There was one undoubtedly negative effect, though, and ironically, it too is in the line of the traditionally non-traditional nature of the National.

Clouds in a silver lining Usually National Theatres are associated with nurturing the national drama. So too has been the Bulgarian National Theatre for the most part of its history. However, since 1989 neither the National Theatre nor the Bulgarian theatre in general have been paying sufficient attention to our contemporary playwriting, for which Bulgarian theatre is in great debt. Very few local plays are being staged and rarely with any priority at that. An illustration of this absurd situation is the fact that the most popular Bulgarian play of the period—The Colonel Bird by Hristo Boytchev, staged in over 30 countries, has not yet been put on the stage of the National. Nor has it appeared in any of the other theatres in Sofia for that matter, which is shameful! One of the explanations in the case of Boytchev’s poignant and very funny satire about the Balkan and global absurdities of today is actually one such absurdity: since 1989 and especially in recent years in Bulgaria, a mark of equivalence is being placed between the political in the arts and the totalitarian. As a result, Bulgarian theatre has been shying away from handling topical political issues and even social ones which could pass for having to do with politics. This is really a paradoxical phenomenon, considering that the situation in the country is brimming with endless problems all stemming from politics.

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Especially in the case of the National, this is completely at odds with its very nature as a civic institution of great importance. And the absurdity becomes even more conspicuous given the name of the theatre. Because, although it is always translated in English as National, its name in Bulgarian actually means ‘People’s Theatre’.

People’s theatre The National Theatre has been ‘the People’s theatre’ since a special law was passed in 1903 in order to institutionalize it. The term is used in the same sense as when applied to our classical writers and poets who, since the end of the nineteenth century, have been called people’s writers and poets, including Ivan Vazov, the patron of the National. Essentially, the connotation of ‘people’s’ is ‘serving the whole society’ and, hence, emphasizes the democratic nature of the arts in principle. As Kristina Tosheva writes in her study of the National’s first decades, ‘theatre is viewed as an indelible part of society’ and is perceived as ‘part of the spiritual life of the citizenry.’2 The Bulgarian name of the National emphasizes one more important fact as well: it has never been a royal theatre. Since its establishment it has been under the auspices of the parliament (specifically, the Ministry of Education until 1944, and from then until now, the Ministry of Culture). What is more, it was viewed for a long time as a kind of a school for the public (according to Stefanov) and considerable efforts were made that the National lives up to society’s expectations. In the first decades of the twentieth century special funds were allotted so that actors, set-designers and managers were sent to study in Paris, Moscow, Prague, Vienna, etc. For quite some time after its inception, it was considered that there was no one in the country well enough educated to be head of the theatre, and so an array of foreigners (from Croatia, Czechoslovakia, and Russia) were invited to do the job. Then the best Bulgarian writers and poets worked either as heads of the theatre or as directors there. In 1925 one of the disciples and close co-workers of Stanislavsky, Nikolay Osipovitch Massalitinov, was invited to take the helm of the National, in the wake of the furore caused by the tour of part of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1920. He accepted and stayed there for more than 40 years, even after 1944. As a result, the National got, so to speak, a first-hand initiation into the Method both via the school at the theatre which Massalitinov established (which in a way laid the foundations for the future NATFA) and via his substantial body of work as a director during all those years. *** Considering all that history and the current situation at the National, it is very natural that there has never been a reason in Bulgaria for discussing whether the time of this institution has already passed. There are, of course,

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many answers to the question of whether we need National Theatres today, in general. Here is one more, with a Bulgarian address: ‘The National Theatre has always been emblematic of where the country’s theatre is in principle’, says Vandov. ‘However, the necessity of the National is especially evident in difficult economic times. Its path should be cleared so that the talents [in the theatre field] who live today have somewhere to flourish. These talents can not wait another 20 years for things to get better.’ It may sound as if in Bulgaria there are no other theatres. No, there are: around 50 of them, apart from the opera and ballet, even though the current population of the country is only about 7 million. Yet, very few theatres have managed not only to survive but to bloom as well. The spirit may die last, but the miserable financial situation in the field has taken its toll and the level of the middle-range productions has significantly declined. The National has not only been one of the successful ‘survivors’ who have flourished but it has been definitely leading the flock. Not that the economic circumstances there are so much better (staff actors get the equivalent of about 225 euros a month), but, although working under very difficult financial conditions, theatre-makers there have managed to work real wonders.

Notes 1. All quotations are from personal interviews conducted in September and October 2006. 2. Kristina Tosheva (2004), A 100 Years National Theatre. (Sofia: Damian Yakov Publishing House).

17 The Disappearing Balkans: National Theatres and Geopolitics Barbara Sušec Michieli

Political changes and cultural clichés When I was first introduced to the geography of Europe some thirty years ago, I thought that ‘Balkans’ was an ordinary geographical name. In the atlases of that time, the northern part of the Mediterranean was an area consisting of the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas.1 The Balkans included the territories of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and (part of) Romania. To the south, it was bounded by the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean and Black seas. Geographical atlases of today are different. The Balkan Peninsula is nowhere to be found; the northern coasts of the Mediterranean are part of South Western or South Eastern Europe. In these new atlases, ‘Balkans’ appears only as the name of the mountain chain in central Bulgaria, written in a small, barely readable typeface.2 The geographical images of Europe and the world have changed, and along with them new interpretations of history and common identities have emerged. In 1919, the Sarajevo daily Glas Naroda (The Voice of the People) said of the newly established state: ‘Yugoslavia has the reputation of the most peaceful and the least tragic country in the world’.3 Fifteen years after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, this is just a quaint memory of a onetime political utopia. After the Second World War, citizens of the former Yugoslav republics, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia, frequently declared themselves Yugoslavs. Today, this is a rare exception. The end of socialism and the rise of ethno-pluralism and transnationalism during the last decades of the twentieth century essentially changed the attitude towards identity issues. Conflicts that once appeared as confrontations between social and economic systems are today masked as the cultivation of geographical, linguistic and cultural differences.4 The process of European integration creates the need for a different articulation of culture and a re-interpretation of European history.5 Although the establishment of a ‘European theatre’ in Brussels does not seem to be a likely development in 196

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the near future, we do encounter various forms of the unification of culture on a daily basis. Where, then, should I seek stable points of reference when considering the issues of National Theatres and identities in the Balkans? In her comprehensive study entitled Imagining the Balkans, Maria Todorova showed that the phantasm of the Balkans is in many ways akin to that of the Orient.6 In the eyes of Western media and politicians, ‘Balkans’ is effectively a cliché. It embodies the ideology of the border. It has become a synonym for the culturally backward part of Europe in which ethnic conflicts are a ‘natural’ phenomenon. Within this frame of reference, expressions like ‘Balkan Theatre’ or ‘Balkan Theatre of the Absurd’ primarily appear as metaphors for ‘theatre of war’ in the former Yugoslavia rather than attributes of culture or the arts.7 The emerging cliché of the word ‘Balkan’ essentially influences the context and array of possible meanings. Conceptualizations of the world and identities are closely related to the processes of shaping and disseminating clichés and the reproduction of images and recognizable messages.

‘Inflation’ of theatrical institutions ‘National theatre’ is a fluid notion. On the one hand, it denotes the theatrical activity of an ethnic or linguistic community or nation, while on the other it appears as part of the names of theatre companies.8 In this way, an important symbolic link is established between the individual and general levels, since an appearance is not solely an appearance, but it also points to the actual social and political position of the protagonists. By establishing National Theatres and other institutions, nations set up mechanisms of social control, and regional and local structures of domination. In this essay, I will try to shed some light on certain characteristics of this process in the former Yugoslavia. In the past, the area of the Balkans had the status of an important ‘contact’ area. The border between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires ran across the Balkans, as did the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Empire. Today, the southern border of the European Union is in the Balkans. The first nation-states in this region emerged in the nineteenth century (Serbia, Montenegro), followed in 1918 by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later renamed Yugoslavia. An illustrative piece of data important for the understanding of theatre in the former Yugoslavia is the fact that in 1990 there were as many as thirtyfive theatres in this region which called themselves ‘National Theatres’.9 The first conspicuous wave of the institutionalization of theatrical activity by ethnic communities occurred as early as the 1860s with the establishment of permanent National Theatre companies in Zagreb (1860), Ljubljana (1867), Novi Sad (1861) and Belgrade (1869). Performances were in Croatian, Slovene or Serbian, and in many cases these theatres shared premises with German theatres, which at that time operated in all major cities of Austria-Hungary. In 1881, a permanent German theatre was even founded in Sarajevo.

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The establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 was soon followed by a thorough reorganization of theatre activities. German theatres were dissolved and their premises taken over by Slovenian, Croat and Serbian theatre companies. Theatre was nationalized. On 1 October 1919, the Council of Ministers issued a resolution stipulating three categories of National Theatres in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes: (a) National Theatres in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana; (b) five subsidized regional theatres in Skopje, Novi Sad, Sarajevo, Split and Osijek; and (c) the required number of municipal, travelling theatres in Niš, Kragujevac, Varaždin and Maribor. The third conspicuous wave of founding National Theatres occurred after the Second World War and following the introduction of the socialist system. Between 1944 and 1954, as many as 18 new National Theatres were established in Yugoslavia, of which 7 were in Macedonia, 3 in Serbia, 1 in Kosovo, 4 in Vojvodina, 2 in Croatia and 1 in Montenegro. Performances were in the official languages of the individual republics: Serbian, Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian, and in Vojvodina and Kosovo in Hungarian and Albanian as well. In 1947, the Jugoslovensko dramsko pozorište (Yugoslav Drama Theatre) was established in Belgrade, presenting performances in Serbian. The practice of establishing National Theatres continued after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. For example, in Slovenia, a third National Theatre was created in 2003 in Nova Gorica, a town at the Slovenia/Italy border, in addition to the two existing National Theatres that had operated since 1918. It is debatable as to what sort of approach should be adopted in analysing this historical hyper-production of institutions that called themselves ‘National Theatres’.10 My interpretation is based on the assumption – developed by Louis Althusser and his followers – that an institution lends material existence to the ruling ideology.11 In this context, the ‘multiplication’ of National Theatres may be understood as a sign of increasing decentralization of power and as a symptom of the strengthening of regional structures. In Yugoslavia, National Theatres indeed marked the country’s political centres and the territories of individual ethnic communities, but they primarily served the function of establishing local dominions.

Ethnic designations Every state controls and regulates the use of its national insignia and symbols, meaning that the battle for the name of a theatrical institution is invariably a political battle. The history of the naming and renaming of theatrical institutions in the former Yugoslavia reveals the characteristic conflict between opposing ideological tendencies. First, individual ethnic and linguistic communities attempted to include, in an explicit manner, national attributes in the names of National Theatres, as is well illustrated by names

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such as Slovenian National Theatre, Croatian National Theatre or Serbian National Theatre.12 These names, which became well established as early as the nineteenth century, the time of the first attempts to institutionalize theatre, functioned as territorial designations or as a kind of trademark. They unambiguously addressed not only the local people, but also ‘foreigners’, ‘others’ and neighbouring or co-habiting communities. In ethnically mixed regions of the former Yugoslavia, these tendencies caused serious conflicts. For example, there was an extensive debate in Sarajevo between 1919 and 1921 as to which ethnic group, i.e. Croats or Serbs, was the legitimate holder and organizer of the ‘National Theatre’.13 Owing to national conflicts, the Yugoslav government issued a directive in 1921 requiring all National Theatres to remove ethnic designations from their names, i.e. the attributes Serbian, Croatian or Slovenian. By prescribing uniform names, the state obviously attempted to neutralize ethnic demands and regional tendencies. A similar principle was discernible in Slovenia in 2003, when the state appeared in the role of founder of the third National Theatre, the Slovensko narodno gledališˇce Nova Gorica ‘Slovenian National Theatre Nova Gorica’, previously operating under the name Primorsko dramsko gledališˇce ‘Primorska Drama Theatre’, established in 1955. The arguments offered as explanations of the re-naming were all based on interesting, albeit well-known, rhetoric. The following are excerpts from three short statements carried by newspapers:

• The town mayor stated: ‘This is an important event, because our theatre will become Slovenian theatre’. He stressed that culture has always had special significance in the border region of Nova Gorica.14 • The manager of the newly established theatre focused on economic aspects: ‘. . . national institutions should be national by their external appearance and not only by virtue of the source of financing.’ In his opinion ‘Primorsko dramsko gledališˇce’ was indeed a name with a reputation in the Slovenian cultural space, but as a national institution it gained a much better position in relation to the Italian cultural space. ‘And, last but not least’, he added, ‘as a national theatre we will also have priority as regards European monetary funds.’15 • The Minister of Culture, Andreja Rihter, explained the renaming of the theatre from a political point of view: ‘The fact that the state is the founder implies a national interest. That means that theatre has become a national interest and that the state acknowledges its supreme quality by which it will represent the state abroad. It was our wish to imply this supreme quality in the title, so we proposed to the theatre and the municipality such a name, by which we unified the country’s system of theatres and operas. This unification brings with it the trust of the world.’16 If these arguments are to be taken seriously, the implication is that a theatre becomes ‘Slovenian’ only when it is recognized as such by the state.17

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It is also obvious that the foundation of a National Theatre in the border region has a demonstrative role with regard to neighbouring ethnic groups. The unification of the names of National Theatres functions inwardly and outwardly as a recognizable cliché. The identity of a community is always shaped through dialogue and is split between the two questions of how ‘we’ see ourselves and how ‘others’ see ‘us’.

National Theatre as an architectural monument The battle for names went hand in hand with the battle for premises. However, ‘small’ and economically weak ethnic groups frequently found it difficult to obtain representative buildings. A number of theatre buildings occupied by National Theatres in the former Yugoslavia were not built for that special ‘purpose’ and were inherited from the former ‘colonisers’. In many respects, these buildings – particularly those in bigger cultural centres – were replicas or clones of characteristic theatre architecture from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, designed by renowned architectural offices from Vienna and Prague, such as Fellner Helmer. Therefore, most of the existing buildings feature more ‘universal’ rather than local elements, while adherence to historical styles points to the wish to emphasize tradition and history. The interior design includes the symbolic elements of local cultural identity (busts of actors, managers and directors), but these frequently appear alongside symbols of European culture. For example, in the Slovenian National Theatre building in Ljubljana, the statues of the founder of Slovenian drama, Josip Jurˇciˇc, and that of William Shakespeare stand side by side.18 Since most theatre buildings are part of the protected cultural heritage, they function as an immutable feature of urban architecture. In much the same way as names, buildings, too, followed the principle of unification and can hence be understood as cultural clichés.19 The founding of National Theatres and the construction of representative theatre buildings were linked to the historical project of the ‘modernization’ and ‘Europeanization’ of the Balkans. This project was enforced in the nineteenth century as part of the expansion policies of powerful Western empires, especially Austria-Hungary; but it was also supported by local circles, given that the subordinated ethnic groups accepted and promoted it of their own accord. However, does this mean that the theatre cultures of the Balkans were only belated copies of grand Western models? This would be an extremely problematic interpretation, neglecting important aspects of diversity. Western models were indeed an important example in the development of National Theatres in the Balkans, but they were always transformed according to local cultural tradition, folklore and particular social or geopolitical needs. The view that differences between cultures reflect their different positions on the development axis – often found in reviews of European theatre history – is disputable today, because it seems that ‘Europe’ constructed

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the ‘backward Other’, primarily in order to be able to assess its own progress with respect to that Other.20 The same objection can be raised against the ideas of centre and periphery. Historical explanations of national identities and cultures, based on the model of modernization and progress, are dangerous seeds of cultural wars. Undoubtedly, no less dangerous would be the transformation of the epic tale of progress into a tale of exploitation.21

The erosion of the state Historical and sociological analysis of National Theatres in the former Yugoslavia reveals complex links between general social and political processes and the institutional organization of the theatrical field. It also sheds light on the functioning and role of ideological mechanisms in theatre culture and art. Problematic relationships between theatre, state and ideology are not, however, only characteristic of small, peripheral areas of Europe or of cultural environments without a long democratic tradition. It is also interesting to note the historical process of the hyperproduction of National Theatres in the former Yugoslavia – which in some expert circles will perhaps be dubbed the ‘Balkanization of National Theatres’ – in light of the global social processes and political (re-)configurations of the modern world. It points to an erosion of the state which is characteristic of today’s Europe. This process, closely linked to events in art and culture, is not new. Even in the twentieth century, different attempts at redefining the relationships between society, the individual, the state and art have frequently led to a degeneration of state authority. During this period the state was perceived above all as a formation employing an oppressive ideological apparatus to discipline individuals and stifle their freedoms: a foreign body standing between society and the individual. Utopian energy was directed towards a stateless community. New political configurations, which hover between ethnic demands and transnationalism, compel us to re-open the question of whether the state is still a key repressive formation against which intellectual criticism and art should direct its revolutionary power. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek makes the following observation on this issue: ‘In contrast to expectations it has become clear that there’s nothing liberating about the breaking of state authority. On the contrary: we are consigned to corruption and the impervious game of local interests which are no longer restricted by a formal legal framework. …In a certain sense Bosnia is merely a metaphor for Europe as a whole. Europe is coming closer and closer to a state of non-statehood where state mechanisms are losing their binding character. The authority of the state is being eroded from the top by trans-European regulations from Brussels and international economic ties, and from the bottom by local and ethnic

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interests, while none of these elements are strong enough to fully replace state authority.’22 The utopia of the future is a state without a nation, organized as an abstract structure of authorities and principles and no longer based on an ethnic community or territory. Such a state will need a new kind of art. Or, as Slavoj Žižek says: ‘As far as art, according to definition, is subversive in relation to the existing establishment, any art that today wants to be up to the level of its assignment must be a state art in the service of a still nonexistent country.’23 The issue of national identity and National Theatre today is connected with the radical questioning of established cultural clichés and geopolitical configurations. Perhaps the vision of the future is the vision of the disappearing Balkans and a disappearing Europe.

Notes 1. Atlas sveta za osnovne in srednje šole (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1979), pp. 38–44. 2. Atlas sveta za osnovne in srednje šole, 2nd edn (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 2004), pp. 52–62. 3. Glas naroda [The Voice of the People], Sarajevo, 30, October 1919, No. 83. 4. See Walter Benn Michaels (2004). 5. Such an attempt is the extensive publishing project entitled The Making of Europe, edited by Jacques le Goff. The participants in the project are renowned researchers, among them Umberto Eco, Jack Goody, Peter Burke, Jürgen Kocka, etc. 6. Maria Todorova (2001), Imaginarij Balkana (Ljubljana: Inštitut za civilizacijo in kulturo) first appeared in New York (1997), Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press). 7. Internet resources offer a wealth of material for research on this subject. 8. The issues relating to the writing of the history of National Theatres are treated in detail in S.E. Wilmer (ed.) (2004). The case of Slovenia is presented in my essay ‘Nationalism, Tradition and Transition in Theatre Historiography in Slovenia’, pp. 65–87. 9. In 1990, there were 90 permanent theatres registered in the former Yugoslavia. This figure is taken from Godišnjak Jugoslovenskih pozorišta 89/90 (Novi Sad: Sterijino pozorje, 1991). 10. I should point out here that theatre and opera/ballet companies had different statuses. The “hyper-production” of National Theatre institutions applies only to drama theatres. 11. See Louis Althusser (1971), pp. 127–86; Rastko Moˇcnik (1999), 3 Teorije: Ideologija, Nacija, Institucija [3 Theories: Ideology, Nation, Institution] (Lublyana: Založba/*cf). 12. In this respect, the naming of National Theatres followed a different principle from the naming of other national institutions, e.g. Narodna galerija (National Gallery) and Narodni muzej (National Museum). 13. See Josip Leši´c (1974), Pozorišno Sarajevo (1918–1920) [The Theatre World of Sarajevo (1918–1920)]. An extract from the Prilozi za prouèavanje istorije Sarajeva [Contributions to the Study of the History of Sarajevo] (Sarajevo: Muzej grada Sarajeva), pp. 269–304.

Barbara Sušec Michieli 203 14. Klavdija Figelj, ‘Primorskega dramskega gledališˇca ni veˇc’ [‘Primorsko Drama Theatre is gone’], Primorske novice [Primorska News], 5 December 2003, No. 97, pp. 24. The town mayor was Mirko Brulc. 15. Ibid. The manager of the theatre was Sergej Pelhan. 16. Ibid. 17. By law, the term Slovenia, its derivations and related abbreviations, and the national flag and coat of arms, can be used as part of the name of a company only upon obtaining approval of the government. The same applies to the use of names of significant historical figures. 18. This is the building of the present-day Opera (The Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana). 19. See also Marvin Carlson (1989). 20. See, for example, Laurence Senelick (ed.) (1991); Manfred Brauneck, (2003), Die Welt als Bühne (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag). 21. A detailed account on this topic is Josep Fontana (2003), Evropa pred zrcalom (Ljubljana: Založba/*cf), which first appeared as Fontana (1994), Europa ante elespejo (Barcelona: Editorial Critica). 22. Slavoj Žižek, ‘Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa’ [first appeared in 1993] in Inke Arns (ed.) (2003), Irwin: Retroprincip: 1983–2003 (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, Archiv für Aktuelle Kunst), p. 51. In addition to this text, see also Barbara Sušec Michieli (2006), p. 173. 23. Ibid. An interesting example of this type of ‘subversive’ art was the project entitled ‘The State Through Time’ by the artistic group Neue Slowenische Kunst NSK – IRWIN, staged some years ago in Sarajevo, Berlin, Graz, Amsterdam, Florence and some other cities. In Sarajevo, the project was staged in the representative building of the National Theatre, and in Berlin in the Volksbühne theatre.These buildings were ‘proclaimed’ the territories of the NSK state and were equipped with NSK symbols. The entry into the premises where exhibitions, concerts and lectures were organized was allowed only to those who acquired the citizenship and documents of the NSK state beforehand. In this way the project directed attention to the fundamental phantasms and constructs on which national identification is based; and, by juxtaposing recognizable national and regional symbols, it revealed their generality, the similarity in rhetoric and in symbolic language.

18 Inadequate Subsidy and a Market Economy in the Baltic Countries Edgaras Klivis

The quest for legitimation As an institution, the National Theatre in Lithuania is quite recent. It was founded in 1998 on the basis of the Lithuanian Academic State Drama Theatre (and in turn the former State Theatre of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, established in 1940) and was legally defined by the Law of Theatre and Concert Organizations passed by the Lithuanian Parliament as late as 2004. Until then the Vilnius ‘Academic State’ theatre of the Soviet decades, however grandiose and centralized, did not quite correspond to the idea of a ‘National’ culture establishment. As the local Communist government was residing in Vilnius and all the important meetings of Soviet officials and delegations from Moscow and other Soviet republics took place in the capital city, the Lithuanian Academic Drama theatre had to meet harsh requirements for the proper representation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Consequently, the most provocative and nationalist oriented playwrights and stage directors were kept outside the capital in other smaller cities of Lithuania, like Kaunas, Panev˙ežys, Šiauliai and Klaip˙eda. Furthermore, during the Soviet years the institution as such was perceived by many as part of a repressive system and as a way of legitimating censorship and state coercion of the artists. Therefore theatre production as a celebration of national community was at best identified with the cases when a performer succeeded in escaping for a moment the ‘institution’ in the live and uncontrollable situation of theatrical communication. It is true to say that the State Theatre of the interwar period, founded in 1920 as the first Lithuanian professional theatre company, may rightly be titled a National Theatre. However, the gap of more than half a century separating it from today makes it a far-off historical event, curious as it was, yet hardly to be seen as a legal or artistic precedent of contemporary theatrical institutions and practices. Moreover, the State Theatre was far from being a faultless embodiment of the ‘artistic temple’ of the nation. Quite

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provincial and limited in its artistic scope, distrustful towards any foreign (especially Russian) novelties, the State Theatre of interwar Lithuania leaned more towards the entertainment of the local bourgeoisie and the ideological claims of the authoritarian regime of Antanas Smetona, the leader of the Nationalist party, than the experimental spirit and aesthetic ambitions of the theatre reformers of the early twentieth century.1 Consequently the National Theatre established at the very end of the twentieth century was by no means a natural descendant of any prior formations. Thus, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first years of independence, the questions concerning the idea of a National Theatre in Lithuania were mostly focused upon how it should be defined, what should be its functions and what institutional and legal form should it assume in order to relate to the demands of the newly (re)born nation-state. The issue of dealing with the Soviet legacy and the new nationalist rhetoric delineating goals for theatre institutions as well as individual artistic practices was developing in numerous articles and public discussions. Ironic as it was, these discussions and the eventual foundation of the Lithuanian National Theatre coincided with the growing awareness of global changes, chief among which was a decrease in the significance of the nationstate as a dominant political and economic subject in regard to the transnational stage of capitalism, the consumer society, economic migration and, since 2004, the entry into the EU and NATO, etc. During the interwar period the well-established, hierarchical and government-funded State Theatre was a reflection of a stable, homogeneous identity, supported by one’s acknowledgement of the individual’s primary subordination to the ethnolinguistic community and the nation-state. In Soviet society, theatre was seen as at least a symbolic and metonymic reconstruction of the ‘imaginary community’ sustained by the narratives of resistance and solidarity. This inner legitimation of a National Theatre, resting on the dominant belief in the ontological status of the ‘collective individual’ – the nation – as an agent in the political and economic spheres and as the only true metaphysical horizon for individual creativity, is at a stage of disintegration and break-up today. The inert and conservative administrative policies of the Lithuanian government veering towards increasingly grandiose manifestations of the nation-state (and the foundation of the National Theatre is but one of them)2 can not mask the fissure in identity and self-reflective attitudes of the artists and the public. The practice of co-production, non-governmental funding, successful commercial projects and active participation of Lithuanian stage directors and playwrights in the projects of foreign theatres and festivals are obvious testimonies of decentralized and heterogeneous landscapes of supply and demand in contemporary theatre. It is now obvious that National Theatre can not be naturally implanted into this landscape and that it needs rational outward legitimation.

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Between the empty space and the void institution It was during the first years of independence that the inner legitimation started fading out, partly as a result of new and more relevant issues related to the ‘post-revolutionary’ political transformations, disillusionment and economic squeeze, in which most Lithuanian theatre companies have found themselves. Condemned to a state of vegetation, the country’s huge theatre companies were forced to reduce the number of performances (from 3683 plays performed per year in 1990 to 2422 in 1993) and turn towards other kinds of repertoire, that of shareholders meetings, charity evenings and jubilee celebrations. Partly, however, it was due to a change in taste of the public and of the artists of the new generation, the growing theatregoers’ recognition of contemporary theatre aesthetics and new ways of managing the theatrical production. Nationalist rhetoric, the stage as representation of the utopic homogeneity of the nation as an expression of solidarity and resistance of the intelligentsia during the Soviet period,3 has now moved towards observance of official celebrations broadcast on national television. A new international theatre festival LIFE started taking place in Vilnius in 1991, introducing provocative Western companies. It had a tremendous success among the public and what is more important, it was supported mostly by private sponsorship. Eimuntas Nekrošius – by then the most prominent figure of Lithuanian theatre – started working under the auspices of the festival. It was an obvious proof that the existing national institutions were too stagnant for creative personalities and a discussion on the issue ‘Where is the proper place for Eimuntas Nekrošius – LIFE or the National Theatre’ started in the pages of one of the cultural weeklies.4 Other well-known companies and stage directors tended towards their own independent institutions as well, instead of entering any of the stagnant theatrical buildings under the denomination of ‘Academic Theatre’, including the unofficial ‘National Theatre’, that of the Vilnius Academic State Drama Theatre. Eventually private and ‘marginal’ theatres, like Kestuˇ ˛ cio Žilinsko teatras (Kestutis Žilinskas’s Theatre), Edmundo studija (Edmund’s Studio) and ˛ ˛ (The Centre ‘Sidelong Art’) became visible, claiming a Centras ‘Menas ˛i šona’ principle of freedom from any institutionalized factory-like production and choosing empty spaces instead of moribund institutions. Liberation in terms of the political and economic life of the country meant new possibilities, and the spirit of experimentation made old, closed and hierarchical structures seem bankrupt and unattractive. The theatrical practice which has been centred around the national community, with theatre production as a celebration of nationhood – as it was inherited from the Soviet years – now seems incongruous with the aesthetic needs of the public. Furthermore, a stable, hierarchical structure of state-funded theatrical institutions was seen by many artists as questionable.

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After all why should certain companies receive an unceasing (though limited) subsidy, rather than others? The question of the legitimation of national, government-funded institutions came up now as the most relevant issue concerning the management of theatrical productions in Lithuania.

Between the left and the right: the political solutions The theatre reform which took place in the two most prominent theatre institutions of the country – the Vilnius State Academic Drama (National) Theatre and the Kaunas State Academic Drama Theatre – in 1992 can be seen as an attempt to respond to the crisis of legitimation by restructuring theatre in terms of the employment of actors. If Lithuanian culture was to enter the market economy along with other spheres of public life, the actors of government-funded theatres should start working on a more competitive basis. The contract system was seen as an optimal solution to match poor state subsidies with the artistic potential of the directors, and also to increase flexibility and cooperation between different institutions. Among the initiators of the reform was Jonas Jurašas – a stage director, who was forced by the Soviet authorities to leave Lithuania in 1974 as a result of his non-orthodox, dissident productions. Jurašas managed to succeed in Broadway theatre in the United States; after returning to Lithuania as somebody close to a national hero in 1990, he became the head of the Kaunas State Theatre and tried to use his Western experiences in reforming the principles of work and employment of the theatre company. Jonas Vaitkus – another reformer in the Vilnius Academic Drama Theatre – was one of the leading stage directors since the late seventies and also one of the best theatre educators of both actors and directors. He saw the contract system primarily as an opportunity for artists of the younger generation to start their artistic careers and to renew the stagnant atmosphere of the state theatres. However, both attempts to reform the institutional legacy of the Soviet period appeared to be an utter failure, partly as a result of the tough and unanimous resistance of the actors, not willing to lose their steady positions and earnings in favour of a vague semi-institutional freedom and mobility; partly, in relation to the change of government which followed the (re)election of the Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party, the descendant of the Soviet Communists, in 1992. According to the French sovietologist Françoise Thom, the authority of the right in post-Soviet Lithuania operated only within the realm of the symbolical and not reality, while the economy generally remained under the control of former members of the Soviet party and nomenclature.5 The election of the Labour Party meant further consolidation of past administrative policies, based on personal contacts, acquaintanceship, closed-door agreements, the lack of financial transparency, and concentration of power. The new government did not tolerate social and institutional reforms, whereas the turmoil and resentment of the actors, most of whom

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were celebrities of the Soviet Lithuanian theatre, was a good reason to suppress the efforts of theatre reform for a long time. Both stage directors who initiated the reforms finally had to resign. The idea of a National Theatre was used as an argument by both, opposing sides. The stage directors (Vaitkus and Jurašas were supported by a few others, planning even to go on strike and stop staging plays until a contract system was implemented) backed by the right and centrist government and by the former Minister of Culture, claimed the reform to be a point of departure for the new system in state subsidy and the new quality of institutional state or national theatres, pointing towards the free market and the spirit of experimentation. The actors, on the other hand, addressed the general public, claiming that the reform was a violation of the tradition of the national stage and an act of barbarism and aggression against the honoured performers, the most famous of whom were associated in the mass conciousness with the roles of the characters of the national dramaturgy, such as ancient Lithuanian kings and other symbolic figures of Lithuanian nationalism during the Soviet period. The symbolic value of these claims was much higher and knowable than that of the reformist ideas, therefore even the most ardent nationalists and proponents of National Theatre (like the group of theatre historians, critics and teachers called the Society of History and Traditions of Lithuanian Theatre) defended the actors and thus supported the prolongation of the Soviet system. And so it was a group of senior actors (laid off by Jonas Vaitkus) who in 1994 addressed the President of Lithuania with the idea of the National Theatre.

Between nationalists and cosmopolitans Unsuccessful attempts to reorganize the institutional system of Lithuanian state theatres in terms of economic policies did not suspend other projects aimed at vindicating the necessity of a National Theatre and defining its special function. The discussions on a National Theatre, or Nation’s Theatre, started as early as the last years of the Soviet empire as an integral part of the programme of overall reconstruction of Lithuanian culture, and were especially active in 1997–1998, just before the National Theatre was actually founded. A huge discussion, initiated by the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, called ‘National Theatre of Lithuania: Individuality, the Present and the Future’, took place in the Theatre Union in 1997 and another: ‘What is National Theatre?’ in the Open Society Foundation in Vilnius in 1998. The different standpoints developed during these discussions were popularly characterized as a polemic among nationalists (raising a claim for the National Theatre to become mainly a stage for Lithuanian national dramaturgy) and cosmopolitans (claiming that there was no need for designating a certain institution as national in so far as the whole theatre in one way or another is an expression of the need and aesthetic interests of the people and thus

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basically can be called national). It also appeared that the older generation of theatre critics and researchers were more concerned about the ideological definitions, while the younger ones referred more to the reflection of the status of a National Theatre in legal concepts. In summary, two concepts of National Theatre can be singled out: one, regarding ‘tradition’ as a historical warrant considering the need for the succession of historical memory within the national culture. The second, resting upon the idea of a financially independent theatre as a flagship for experiment and piloting new ways of artistic collaboration which can later on be suggested for other theatres as the optimal ways of managing stage production.

The legacy of the missing tradition The vision of national culture as based on the mythology of origins and autochthonism is utopic, yet nowhere is the contrast between this utopia and the sociopolitical reality so painfully evident as it is in the East European states, such as Lithuania. As is clearly explained in Ernest Gellner’s (1983) Nations and Nationalism, the gulf separating nationalist rhetoric and the least critical evaluation of the historical processes taking place in these geographical latitudes is disturbingly deep. The fact that, in spite of this gulf, the nationalist rhetoric and mythological narratives remained unchanged and sustained their impact on the self-awareness of the intelligentsia throughout the twentieth century, was determined by the particular historical circumstances. When facing the aggressive politics of colonial tsarist Russia and later of the Soviet Union, nationalism as a form of culture has concentrated and expressed the phantasies of opposition, the ideas of statehood, and the striving for economic and cultural reforms. The idea of a National Theatre was one of these phantasies and it blazed as bright as a flame during the hardest times of cultural opposition, and yet, every time there was a possibility to turn it into reality, it was surprising how poor and ambiguous the institutionalization of the phantasy could be. The ‘traditionalist’ arguments for the National Theatre have thus always faced this dramatic discrepancy. As a rhetorical structure it is not notably different from those of other countries, like Germany or Poland. Yet when Polish scholars are referring to their National Theatre dating back to 1765 and a network of theatrical activities well before that, taking place in the residences of the noblemen, and national dramaturgy in Polish written there, to say nothing of early nineteenth-century Romanticism and playwrights such as Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, they have their argument. The first Lithuanian-spoken theatre, based on plays by members of the late nineteenth-century intelligentsia, which are usually represented as the origin of national Lithuanian theatre in historiography, were but primitive amateur depictions of the everyday life of the peasantry, mostly performed as charity events in the Friendly Societies. One could hardly assume the possibility

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of reverting to these plays in the sophisticated urban milieu of contemporary theatre, and furthermore, obviously nothing can actually be inherited from these events of the fin-de-siècle but the ‘pride’ of having them. The existence of a State Theatre in 1920-1940 may be seen as a predecessor of today’s theatrical institutions. However, it was not given a chance to progress gradually into a contemporary social context and is thus what it is – a dear yet old-fashioned theatre/museum from the times before the Second World War. To say nothing about the dubious possibility of these two decades of theatre activities creating a ‘tradition’. Moreover, it is hard to see how the Soviet theatrical institutions could be regarded as a backbone for the National Theatre, considering the fact that the administrative system, repertoire formation, centralization etc. of theatres in the Soviet Union had been primarily mechanisms of censorship and overall control of art. If not the institution, then maybe there is something about the dramaturgy or the acting style within the institution that may be addressed as the tradition just waiting for a proper outlet in a National Theatre establishment? The idea of staging national dramaturgy has certainly been an idée fixe of many ‘traditionalists’; however, the quantity of productions based on the plays of Lithuanian playwrights that they assumed to be proper, were far from the reality of Lithuanian theatre. During the Soviet period the repertoire of all theatres was subject to control, enforcing the observance of a certain proportion of Lithuanian plays, with plays from Western-block countries and drama from the ‘friendly republics’ of the Soviet block. Furthermore, far from what was expected, Lithuanian stage directors remained quite reserved in regard to national dramaturgy even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Directors like Eimuntas Nekrošius, Jonas Vaitkus, and Oskaras Koršunovas have more than once declared that they find most of Lithuanian drama too unprovoking, weak in dramatic structure and behind the times in topic; they have eventually staged some plays of the interwar period and the Soviet years, but would never consider Lithuanian drama to be the focus of their artistic practice. Thus the idea of ‘Back to national dramaturgy’ sounds more like a futile slogan, although it is used whenever it is needed as a symbol: in his programme to the Ministry of Culture Jonas Vaiktus promised to organize workshops for the young playwrights, while Rimas Tuminas, after becoming the head of the National Theatre, suggested declaring 1999 as the year of Lithuanian drama. The invitation addressed to other directors to stage national dramaturgy was also signed by Eimuntas Nekrošius and Jonas Vaitkus. In fact, national dramaturgy was presented as the main focus of the National Theatre by Rimas Tuminas in 1997: there was a project to establish an investment fund for developing national dramaturgy and a studio within the National Theatre to stage a few performances a year. If the performances, financed by the fund, appeared to be successful, they could then be moved to the main stage. None of these projects came true though, and today the repertoire of the National Theatre includes the same amount of Lithuianian dramaturgy as do other

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theatres in the country. If there are certain tendencies to turn towards plays by contemporary Lithuanian writers today, it is not so much related to the tradition any more, but rather towards the deconstruction of the ‘tradition’, since modern Lithuanian plays, such as those by Marius Ivaškeviˇcius (Madagascar), Sigitas Parulskis (The Letters of Barbora Radvilaite), and Herkus Kunˇcius (Matas), tend towards ironic reflections of nationalist mythologies. With regards to the acting style, there is hardly any possibility of seeing it as ‘national’, for most of the actors from the interwar period were educated by the directors who studied and worked in the theatres of St. Petersburg and Moscow, while the generations of actors of the Soviet period studied in GITIS in Moscow, later becoming the teachers of the same method in the Music Academy of Vilnius. Finally, particular visual strategies in stage directing, associated with names like Eimuntas Nekrošius and Oskaras Koršunovas, can be seen as related to certain local social milieux and even landscapes (Nekrošius for instance claims that the images of his stage cosmos come from a little village in the Western part of Lithuania). Indeed, there were plans developed by Rimas Tuminas in 1997, when he was to become the head of the National Theatre, to make it into the institution engaging all the best Lithuanian stage directors of different generations: Eimuntas Nekrošius, Jonas Jurašas, Jonas Vaitkus, Oskaras Koršunovas, Cezaris Graužinis, Gintaras Varnas and Audrius Nakas. The National Theatre was to become the ‘artistic home’ for all the most prominent stage directors. However, the directors chose to open their own theatres and participate in co-productions with foreign festivals, rather than support the institution of the National Theatre, with its limited subsidies and huge staff. There have been other ideas as well, defining the National Theatre as, for instance, the stage representing primarily a ‘pure’ Lithuanian language as threatened by both the years of Soviet Russification in the past and the increasing significance of English in popular culture, the internet and future global society. Or there has been a notion of the National Theatre as being an institution introducing national culture, literature and tradition to the younger generation, oriented thus mostly towards youth, etc. But these notions are still in many ways related to the ideas of ‘the tradition’ and national dramaturgy already discussed, and they face the same ambiguities and the same utopic attitude and ignorance towards the reality of both the virtual tradition and the contemporary cultural situation. The metaphysics of nationalism involves the images of origin, primal homogeneity and purity that encourage a reversion towards tradition and for seeing the nation’s past as the source of the legitimation of national culture institutions. But what if there is no tradition and the attempts to invent it do not match with the reality of what is actually taking place in the theatre? One can still insist on the tradition and thus condemn oneself to suffering the discrepancies and inefficiencies of the institutions. The contemporary National Theatre of Lithuania as a huge yet abortive establishment can be

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seen in this context of the missing tradition. One eventually has to pay for the utopia. It is possible, however, to lay stress on future possibilities instead.

Post-Soviet ideas of reform and their contraversions Parallel to the idea of returning to ‘the tradition’ was a concept of the National Theatre as a site of experiment, artistic collaboration and institutional agency for all the state theatres. In fact, the first attempts to reform the institutional system of theatres were initiated during the perestroika period, and although the way it was implemented was still too ‘Soviet’ – giving orders from above – it had been an expression of the need for changes floating in the air. The different concepts of Lithuanian National culture worked out by the initiative ¯ groups of the Sajudis movement also included quite daring projects for the National Theatre. Some of them may still be seen as relevant. National theatre as an inter-institutional experiment. One way of establishing the qualitative difference between the National Theatre and other theatre institutions in the country is to say that the National Theatre should not be an institution at all. It should rather exist in the form of a network, covering the whole country, including festivals, co-productions and exchange productions between the institutions. After years of isolated and highly institutionalized Soviet theatre, this idea of semi-institutional activities of artistic collaboration seemed quite fascinating. National Theatre as a site of less institutionalized collaboration between theatre artists and playwrights. Firstly, this idea was seen as a way of animating national dramaturgy and bringing it into the horizon of stage directors. Secondly this kind of collaboration would mean more attention to the everyday realities of contemporary Lithuania and is this not an aim proper for a National Theatre? National theatre as a way of giving institutional encouragement for alternative and experimental productions. As an opposition to the Soviet model of theatre-factory kind of productions and to the model of commercial theatre, experimental alternative projects have an exclusive right to claim state support, for it is of national interest to encourage new forms and the spirit of experimentation. Above all, however, the Vilnius State Drama Theatre and later the National Theatre have been expected to be the flagship of the administrative reforms – the transition from the Soviet system, based on the labour contracts that operated when state subsidies corresponded to the number of staff working in the theatre, to the more logical system of short-term contracts and production-oriented financing. The radical way to implement the reform in 1992 has been mentioned above: it met with the stubborn and boisterous opposition of the actors, who soon found their patronage from both the leftist government and the rightists’ protectors of tradition. The actors went to court and won the case: Jonas Jurašas and Jonas Vaitkus were forced to

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retire. The subsequent theatre managers – the director Rimas Tuminas (for the period 1995–9) and the composer Faustas Lat˙enas (1999–2000) tried to exercise the same reform in a less radical way, only to confront similar dissatisfaction and resistance. They have both left the position because it was impossible to progress and to improve the efficiency of the supreme theatre of the country: inadequate state subsidies and an unreasonable way of using the finance turned the National Theatre into something close to a tenement building for other theatres, touring companies, meetings of the political parties and celebrations of banks, and as a kind of secure habour for more than 60 actors and a huge administrative personnel. Eventually, as the two recent managers of the National Theatre – Vytautas Rumšas (2000–05) and Adolfas Veˇcerskis (since 2005) – are actors, the long confrontation between the directors and the actors has ended, as well as the efforts to introduce structural and administrative changes. There have been other ideas about how a theatre institution or several of them in different cities, representing the interests of the nation and then sponsored by the state, should be organized. Rimas Tuminas legitimated the title of the National Theatre by the idea of the ‘umbrella’ principle: the National Theatre as an artistic platform for the best directors and theatre companies of the country. As the number of proper theatre buildings in Vilnius is quite limited, the stage of the National Theatre has indeed been the stage for performances of Eimuntas Nekrošius’s theatre company, Meno fortas, Oskaras Koršunovas’s OKT, The Small Theatre headed up by Rimas Tuminas himself, the ACH dance theatre of Andželika Cholina, etc. Yet it is not quite clear if this is the promised ‘house and home’ for the best artists because they are under the stress of a heavy rent, and after all, the house belongs to its proper host – the company and the administration of the National Theatre itself. Other related ideas of Rimas Tuminas, like turning the National Theatre into the agency and representative of all Lithuanian theatres, absorbing certain functions of the Ministry of Culture, turning theatre into the meeting point of the theatregoing public and all the most important and contemporary theatre projects taking place in Lithuania, guaranteeing funds for tours for all theatres, and eventually the National Theatre becoming a marketplace of productions and artists, were not specified sufficiently enough to oppose the settled model.

Conclusions If one day some hostile powers of history erased the inscription National on the building of the Lithuanian National Theatre in Vilnius, it would hardly be missed by any significant social group. The older generation scarcely had time to get used to it. For them, it is still the same State Academic Drama Theatre that they used to go to decades ago. The notion of ‘National’ does not appear in the value system and aesthetic tastes of the younger generation either;

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they rather turn towards new, more flexible and non-institutional forms of theatre production. It is true to say that the staff of the theatre could have certain interests in the title, yet it is most likely that they fancy rather the economic status guaranteed by the title. For the time being the Lithuanian National Theatre has become a kind of self-sufficient and closed social institution, which, although having the privilege (certified by the new law for theatre institutions) of being able to decide how to allocate funds granted by government, uses it not as an opportunity for new strategic working, but rather as a guarantee for a half-satisfying existence and feeling of security.

Notes 1. This may be clearly illustrated by the example of Mikhail Chekhov. When Lithuanian stage director Andrius Oleka-Žilinskas, the general director of the State’s Drama Theatre since 1928 and a former member of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s studio, invited him to the theatre as a director and a teacher at the theatre school, numerous articles in right-wing magazines initiated a boisterous discussion on the assumed dangers of ‘Russification’ and concern about the purity of national culture invaded by rootless modern artists. (On this issue, see Ališauskait˙e Asta (2006). 2. The example of the reconstruction of the Royal Palace in Vilnius, regardless of all the controversies and objections expressed by intellectuals, artists and art critics, is a very telling case of the same process. The Royal Palace of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was built in the fifteenth century and demolished in 1801. In the year 2000 Parliament passed an Act concerning the reconstruction of the Palace – a huge building in the very centre of Vilnius – as a symbol of the Lithuanian nation-state. In spite of the critical arguments against the reconstruction (the dubious function of the vast edifice in the historical centre of Vilnius, the financing of this reproduction rather than the restoration of the authentic buildings of the old town of Vilnius inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List), it started in 2002. 3. See Edgaras Klivis (2005). ¯ 4. Andrašiunait˙ e Rasa (1995), ‘Ar ne per daug narciziškumo’ [Eight theatre people answer to the question ‘Where is the proper place for Eimuntas Nekrošius – LIFE or ¯ ir menas, 23 December. national theatre?’] Literatura ˛ 5. Alain Besançon and Françoise Thom (1992), ‘Lietuva balsavo už tolesni˛ marazma’. Lietuvos aidas, 1 December.

Part D Challenges for the Twenty-First Century

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19 National Theatres Undermined by the Withering of the Nation-State Dragan Klaic

Created in the course of the last two-and-a-half centuries, National Theatres were ideologically utilized in Europe by the projects of nation formation, and the assertion of the national culture and national language. These long and complex processes have not taken place simultaneously in all parts of Europe and have manifested some specific features in particular places, or have been carried out with some delay and difficulty. National Theatres were deeply implicated in those cultural and ideological processes thanks to their ability to provide symbolic representation of national identity, to stage the nation’s honour and pride and its fulfilment of historic promise, which was much appreciated by both the elites and the masses. In most cases, those theatre institutions were at the same time a vehicle for bourgeois emancipation, for the elevation of cultural and civic status, and for propagating morals, virtue and patriotism.

Emancipation potential lost Today, it is difficult to imagine how any National Theatre can pretend to represent the spirit of the nation, construct and enhance national identity and stress the distinctions of national character. Even in the nations that have recently acquired some sort of statehood, in the disintegrative processes prompted by the end of the Cold War, the state-building and nation-building rely more on electronic media than on the stage. All those notions – spirit of the nation, national identity, and national character – have become worn out and deprived of consensual meaning. Most National Theatres, even those of artistic excellence, have become divorced from any emancipation project a long time ago and lost most of their uplifting and value-shaping potential for any specific social group that would substitute for the nation. Moreover, those institutions compete, despite their nominal status and historic merit, with other publicly funded cultural producers, including other theatre companies that have in the meantime acquired public subsidies. Altogether, the 217

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National Theatres and other publicly funded companies suffer from a ferocious competition from the commercial theatre of entertainment and from the globalized cultural industry that offer a broad range of uniform cultural products and for a low price. Companies that are called national are in many countries not necessarily the best and not the most important ones. Often they are mediocre, suffer from institutional fatigue, carry their old glory high on a banner but seem a bit disoriented by the far-reaching changes engulfing Europe and affecting all aspects of traditional cultural production. These changes in values, attitudes and life styles are prompted by migration, the communication technology revolution, shrinking public subsidies, the graying of the audience and a steady rise in their institutional costs in a market-driven economy. In some countries, National Theatres have never existed. In the Netherlands, for instance, the companies are traditionally linked to specific cities, and even when they receive national subsidies to tour the country, they are practically equal among themselves, including Het Nationale Toneel in The Hague, a 20-year-old company, with no special symbolic advantage among its peers and competitors. In Italy, a National Theatre never emerged properly: travelling companies were led by star actors and today teatri stabili (permanent companies) enjoy some patronage from regional and local authorities. Mussolini’s corporate state compromized the cultural preoccupations of the national government, so that in the ensuing democracy since 1945 development of the cultural infrastructure was increasingly seen as a primary responsibility of the regions and cities. No company based in Rome or Milan or elsewhere could ever pretend to stand for the entire nation, not even Strehler’s Piccolo in its most glorious days of Europe-wide fame. In Germany, some 260 repertory theatres emerged since the 1760s as projects of aristocratic patronage or bourgeois self-emancipation. Several carry ‘national’ in their title but their mutual hierarchy is muddled by the German pluri-centric cultural constellation and the relegation of culture to the competence of federal Länder. The reunification of Berlin will in time probably shape it as an undisputed cultural capital, but even then none of the existing bigger companies – Deutsches Theater, Volksbühne, Berliner Ensemble, Maxim Gorki, and Schaubühne – will dare to call themselves the prime stage of the entire nation. Even if they would, the media and their peers would put them back in their place. In Flanders, theatre was an instrument of cultural and political opposition of the Dutch-speaking Belgians to the dominance of the francophone elites. The KNS (Koninglijke Nationaal Theater – Royal National Theatre) in Antwerp and the KVS (Koninglijke Vlaams Theater – Royal Flemish Theatre) in Brussels, claimed originally as bastions of flamingants (radical Flemish nationalists), decayed after the 1970s and were subsequently reinvented as dynamic houses of innovation and intercultural engagement, reflecting the new political agenda, set by migration, rather than the traditional opposition

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of the Dutch-speaking and francophone Belgians. The KNS became Het Toneelhuis in the 1990s, thriving from a merger with an experimental group, De Blauwe Mandag. The KVS, while awaiting the completion of a protracted renovation, immersed itself in the multicultural realities of its immediate urban context instead of serving as a Flemish cultural enclave in Brussels. Today Dutch, French, English, Turkish and Arabic echo from its stage and multilingual translation shows up in the surtitles projected above it. The third Flemish National Theatre, in Ghent, practically collapsed as a permanent company and was recently resurrected as a dynamic production house by a Dutch Gastarbeiter, Johan Simmons, who reduced the house political history to an acronym: the NT Ghent, its current official name.1 The National Theatre of Catalonia was established and provided with its own lavish building in the decentralization and democratization process after Franco that made Catalonia an autonomous region, marked with exceptionally high public investments in the cultural infrastructure. However, a nominal primacy could not ensure the artistic primacy of the company in the context of multifaceted and intensive artistic development in Barcelona. In Sweden, the Royal Dramaten Theatre must be seen as the National Theatre of historic record but a policy of cultural decentralization invented the Riksteatern to provide touring productions for the less densely populated parts of the country and to supplement the work of several municipal houses. Similarly, cultural decentralization greatly multiplied the number of ‘national stages’ in France, financed by the Ministry of Culture, and challenged the automatic dominance of Paris and its historic theatre houses, the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP, National People’s Theatre), established by Jean Vilar in 1950s as a democratic and popular counterpart to the Comédie-Française, loaded with state patronage and elitist privilege, monarchic and republican. In the UK, the struggle for a National Theatre lasted for almost a century and the institution that arose on London’s South Bank in 1976 still cannot answer whether it is a National Theatre of Great Britain or of England? With the political devolution and cultural decentralization of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, what constitutes the nation and what embellishes it with symbolic markers has become less self-evident. The success of the National Theatre over the last three decades coincides with the consistently strong position of its rival, the Royal Shakespeare Company. In Central and Eastern Europe, National Theatres used to be seen since their establishment, mainly in the nineteenth century, as primary cultural symbols of the nation and in some turbulent times even as a compensation for the non-existing national state. That was the role of Polish companies in Warsaw and Cracow and elsewhere on the road, between the Russian- and Austrian-held parts of Poland, from the eighteenth-century partition until its resurrection as a state in 1918. This noble mission, embracing periods of captivity and freedom,2 suffered from the imposition of alternative ideological priorities in the long communist period from 1945 to 1989 and was

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only partially revived afterwards. In fact, large, cumbersome stage organizations have been doing rather badly in the turbulence of the post-communist transition. Even where they moved to a new building, as in Budapest (a grotesque misunderstanding between the performing arts and architecture!) or underwent a thorough renovation, their stability, not to mention prosperity, remains questionable. New market pressures, fierce competition from the emerging leisure industry and ardent consumption destabilized those houses that could have hoped in 1989–90 that the abolition of censorship and ideological control would make them vibrant and popular and would confirm them as the focal cultural forces of the nation. Instead, the nation has been fragmented into disgruntled citizens of diverse persuasions, stratified into the new rich and the new poor, caught between globalists and the anxious, turf-protecting nationalists, while the entire population, especially the traditional elites, have been turned into fervent and moody consumers.3 In some countries of Europe, heavy-handed lobbying ensured a special legal status for the National Theatres, occasionally enshrined in specific laws, endowing them with some symbolic and material privileges; in practice, authorities cannot always provide in budgets what they have promised in the legislation. To compensate for this cutback in their own income, some National Theatres act as ordinary booking houses, renting out their facilities to whoever is willing to pay: a fashion show producer, a political party conference, a theatre competitor with its own private production. Those National Theatres want to have their cake and eat it: to boast of a privileged status as a national treasure in order to pick up more subsidy than the others, and to make a buck on the free rental market, peddling their prestigious facilities. The stronger the exodus of the best creative forces from these companies, the faster they slide into the short-term rental business.4

Double jeopardy A preliminary hypothesis that could be drawn from this random group of examples from across Europe is that the term National Theatre has become a rather arbitrary, almost meaningless label, an anachronistic, exhausted ideological construct. Structurally, almost all National Theatres are repertory companies and that brings them into double jeopardy, both in terms of mission and their organizational model. The mission to serve the nation makes little sense in the epoch of globalization and advanced European integration, when many traditional competences of the nation-state have been transferred to the EU and constrained by a myriad of international conventions and treaties, especially under the aegis of the World Trade Organization. As far as the model is concerned, it was consolidated and perfected by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich Danchenko in the Moscow Art Theatre from 1898, initially fuelled by ticket income and the patronage of the rich Russian merchants,

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later compromised by the incorporation of the Soviet ideology and its aesthetic norms in return for state subsidies. Practically everywhere in Europe, repertory companies became possible and multiplied after the Second World War thanks to the public subsidies that amount to between 45 per cent and 95 per cent of the budget; but they were often municipal and not only state initiatives, and profited from the decentralization and regionalization of governance.5 Today, repertory companies with hundreds of steadily employed artists, technicians and administration have become prohibitively expensive to run. An advanced distribution of labour requires employment of many highly specialized and quite expensive workers. The system is inefficient because it can never make full use of all its human resources – some will be paid and yet work a bit or hardly at all. For each actor on the stage, there will be a few colleagues having a free evening and 3 to 5 workers in the administrative and technical areas. The original artistic merits of this system (a steady ensemble with its own stylistic distinction, the personal growth of artists, the long run of productions and their constant betterment, a great repertory and much variety) are still being invoked as protective mantras but have little basis in reality. The artistic process of a company producing 15 to 30 premieres in a season is inevitably made subservient to a strict planning and budgeting regime that ultimately may stifle creativity. The best and most creative people resent the rigid planning, strict hierarchy and much routine and tend to leave the ensemble for a more appealing creative challenge, coupled with more risk or more fame and more money in the entertainment industry. This exodus has weakened the ranks of some repertory theatres in Central and Eastern Europe – Necrosius created his own private company in Vilnius and rents the stage of the Lithuanian National Theatre he once made so respectable. Some artists go away to entrepreneurial alternatives and come back repeatedly, seeking to have the best of both worlds, as do the grandees of the Royal Dramaten Theatre in Stockholm, who hammered out such privileges for themselves. Moonlighting by actors who play in competitive and often commercial productions and earn extra money in film, television, radio and advertising plagues the work discipline of many repertory theatres from Moscow to Barcelona, whether they are nominally ‘national’ or not. Under those pressures many repertory companies, some of them calling themselves National Theatres, in Western and Eastern Europe and in Scandinavia, have been forced to introduce a range of compromises that have diluted the notion of the ensemble and of the repertory. Actors are contracted for a specific production or for a season. Several premieres are produced in the course of a season and run in a sequential manner for a limited period of a few weeks, overlapping on the monthly programme with 1 or 2 other new productions but not more. Most productions disappear after the end of the season. The most successful ones are eventually brought back later, for a limited run, sometimes with significant cast changes, if there is a prospect

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of an international tour. The British National Theatre and sometimes the RSC even transfer their most successful productions to the West End and run them further on commercial terms, generating extra profit, to be reinvested in their new work. Steady subsidy cuts, especially throughout the 1990s, have forced many repertory theatres to reduce the number of premieres per year. But with less diverse offerings, they attract fewer audiences, entering into a dangerous downward spiral. Touring has become prohibitively expensive, with transport costs, rising hotel prices and union-imposed per diems, so it is hardly an option to compensate for shrinking subsidies, except perhaps for some Eastern European companies going to the West. In Moscow one can see venerable subsidized companies displaying entrepreneurship by subletting their extra space to cafes, restaurants, casinos, pinball arcades, with much money changing hands under the table. Neither is sponsorship a viable alternative in most places, and even when it is secured it brings no more than 3 to 6 per cent of the operating budget, a mere trifle. Some companies are victimized by the configuration of their venue: they can sell out their smaller stage but the ticket income remains much lower than the costs; it is more difficult for them to fill the large auditorium of 700–850 seats. This common size brings considerable costs, rarely recovered with quality programming and at the same time not big enough for full commercial exploitation. The old marketing device of selling subscription tickets in May–June and taking the cash in during the summer for a season that will only start in September does not work so well any longer, even in Germany. People do not want to commit themselves to see a show every third Thursday in the month. A variety of discounts for steady clients has been introduced in place of the old-fashioned and rigid subscription schemes but the loyalty of the public is difficult to nurture and sustain, especially in the places where there is a variety of cultural options every evening. Dramatic theatre competes with opera, dance, cabaret and the innumerable attractions of the entertainment industry, from the multiplex cinemas to clubbing, and not to forget shopping nights and gourmet restaurants, gyms and health clubs luring those who seek a fun evening.6

Away with the smorgasbord A third cause undermining the National Theatres and all the companies based on a repertory model is the weakening of the very notion of the repertory that as a pre-set menu of options means hardly anything to newer generations of potential viewers today. Even if they may have acquired some education and professional qualifications they have not necessarily internalized the traditional canon of the European Bildung. The smorgasbord principle of the repertory, meaning a mixture of Greeks, Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Chekhov, some domestic classic and the contemporary hobbyhorses such as Albee, Miller, Pinter, with a Mamet, Sarah Kane, Lars Norén added for

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some extra flair of radicalism and then quickly balanced with the mainstream Ayckbourn or Yasmina Reza . . . this more or less predictable mixture of the well-known and established names and some carefully chosen surprises and innovations makes many theatre repertories look alike and yet leaves the mass of potential viewers indifferent. The names and the titles tell them little, classics are feared as a bore and the contemporary authors shunned as unknown and possibly too experimental. Contemporary European societies have become too diverse and too individualized to construct much collective loyalty to a canon of dramatic grandees, reshuffled each season anew and offered as a repertory. Increasingly, common reference points just cannot be assumed in any European society, transformed by migration, fragmented by a rich scale of individually constructed life styles, driven by fads and bestsellers, and dominated by choosy, moody consumers. They tend to shop for some quick self-satisfaction: first their interest focuses on Thai cooking, then on some sport exercise, followed by salsa lessons, Gregorian chants, and contemporary dance or world music, or pursuing all those mesmerizing options at the same time in a shifting, unpredictable pattern of steady inconstancy, a true marketing nightmare. Loyalty to a venue or a company, subscription, regularity of visits, and pursuance of a repertory are all incompatible with such a mentality, obsessed with immediate gratification. National classics in the national language – whether Calderon, Ibsen, ˇ Strindberg, Goethe, Corneille, Grillparzer, Schiller, or Madách, Capek, Caragiale, Nuši´c and Drži´c, once perceived within their own national culture as formative assets to be read and seen several times in a lifetime by everyone of average education, thus expected to become familiar and almost proverbial references, have become dusty icons for the generations that grew up on MTV, even if they ultimately acquire a masters degree in facility management or human resources. Hence the conservative panic and efforts to stop further dilution of national identity by the imposition of a prescribed canon of national culture, as recently the Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW) did in once-tolerant Netherlands. Clever producers who know or just feel that repertory as a smorgasbord does not work any longer seek to attract their audience with a dramatization of a bestselling novel, a documentary play on some well-known personality or event of local significance or a dramatization of a once commercially successful film whose title can count on more name recognition than Lorenzaccio or Miss Julie. A sense of novelty can appeal more than another Macbeth, Misanthrope or The Seagull even though Shakespeare and Chekhov hold steady on theatre posters. Very few National Theatres work in a concentrated manner to produce and affirm new domestic playwrights but rather join the waves of success across Europe: Sarah Kane or Yasmina Reza beating Racine, Büchner and Wedekind. Emerging playwrights get sidelined to the small studio stages and in many cities publicly subsidized theatres squeeze more whodunits, farces and melodramas into their repertory even though this is a fare

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that belongs more to the domain and amusement aesthetics of the commercial theatre. Many of those who swear by the advantages of the ensemble system and the cultural value of the repertory are quick to cut corners and, when reproached for their compromises, invoke such excuses as shrunken subsidies and pressures on public cultural organizations to operate as businesses.

Artistic programmers and producers What are the alternatives to the malaise of the National Theatres and to the entropy of a standard repertory? They are emerging in all kinds of modifications to the steady ensemble and repertory schedules mentioned above. Instead of a smorgasbord idea of a repertory programme, one could imagine more efforts to articulate a season of a specific stage in terms of a well chosen and carefully formulated theme, and only then seek plays, old and new, to make the theme come alive. This approach gives some intellectual coherence to the season, profiles the venue and the company and offers a possibility for a range of alliances and productive partnerships, driven by the theme, and developed by the theatre as an initiator – with universities, media, cultural centres, museums, learned journals and various NGOs. The result is hopefully a temporary community of interest, regrouped for the length of a season around the theatre and its theme. Such an approach, hardly ever applied in Europe at this time, requires more advanced planning and coordination, habitual for any ambitious museums for instance, and could promote synergy and a collaborative mentality within the local cultural infrastructure. Instead of being seen as a bastion of an anachronistic notion of a repertory, alien and alienating to many, theatre would emerge as a pivotal institution of civil society, of collective imagination and public debate, a platform of surprising intercultural, intergenerational and other unexpected relationships, capable of connecting to other ‘meaning making frameworks’.7 At least in some Northern and Western European countries alternative organizational models of more flexibility and efficiency are gradually appearing. Against the repertory theatre as a model stands an open stage with a minimal technical and marketing apparatus – not a booking house everyone can rent for some money, but as a programmatic force, personified in a programmer/presenter with a budget and a vision, competent to make intelligent choices about which productions and groups to invite for one or more evenings. This model works well in the small places, where it is quite difficult to provide some creative continuity of local forces, and it works in bigger places where several producing and presenting organizations compete with each other and where an open venue with clever choices could hope to build trust among the regular public and a sense of loyalty to the venue rather than to a group of actors performing one or two nights there.

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One grade up on the complexity scale stands a production house with a producer as a central artistic personality who uses part of the public subsidy to produce new work with ad hoc teams for a limited run, eventually extended with tours, or brings existing theatre groups in residence to co-produce with them new work and sends it on tours after a limited in-house run. This is how the Toneelschuur in Haarlem has been working for years and also Archa in Prague and since recently, Praktika in Moscow as well; and in an elaborate form, this is how Johan Simons (ex ZT/Hollandia) has worked recently at the NT in Ghent, supplementing his own production line with several co-productions each season, either with Belgian and Dutch groups, or with the rep houses in Munich and Zurich. In practice, the roles of a presenter and of a producer merge. A modest public subsidy could keep an open house going in a mixture of more safe and more daring programming decisions and that is how most Dutch venues are run, with different guest companies appearing every evening. Only a handful of the best known companies can fill the hall for several consecutive nights, in a few bigger cities. More public subsidy makes more risk-taking possible and prompts the evolution of an open venue into a production house, especially if the touring dynamic could be organized among such venues and if groups without their own venue also have access to some subsidy for their own creation.8 All sorts of co-producing and programming arrangements emerge then among groups, venues, festivals and prominent individual artists. This evolution of a rigid model of one permanent company, tied to its own venue, towards more flexible, dynamic and transformative ones creates a better and stronger constellation of public theatres to match the growing competition of the commercial theatre and its entertaining offshoots. Repertory theatres, whether they call themselves national or not, will not disappear at once, and it is to be hoped that some will stay on, despite their inherent difficulties, for the sake of their artistic qualities, and not for their nominal status and a ‘national’ label. Some theatres will continue to call themselves national even though their link with the nation and their ability to symbolize the nation will remain a fiction. The performing arts landscape across Europe is becoming more checkered, dynamic and diverse, with an explosive growth of festivals of all sorts, some invented only for a single occasion as a fundraising and marketing device, with the proliferation of small innovative groups that create their own work and do not rely on dramatic literature (Derevo, Rafaelo Sanzio, Motus), and rather slick touring companies (Fura dels Baus), open venues and production houses, and alternative, appropriated and recycled spaces that programme and occasionally produce work. A glance at venues and festival programmes reveals a growing number of international co-productions and a stylistic array of various approaches and interdisciplinary linkages, crossover forms and events. This crowded international scene and the explosive growth of the post-dramatic theatre9 and other performing practices liberated from the habitual play’s dominance, do

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not allow National Theatres to claim any special privileges nor to count on some automatic advantages.

Nationalists do not care much National Theatres have since their inception run a certain risk of being appropriated by nationalist and xenophobic forces. Globalization and European integration provoke political, economic and cultural nationalism as a counter-reaction, either as a nostalgic cry for safety and predictability, derived from an idealized idea of the past, or as an obsession with the identity that prompts all sorts of exclusivist delineations and ultimately a self-defeating self-enclosure. Nationalism expresses itself as a populist alternative to the neo-liberal ideal of the unrestrained world market; or as a xenophobic reaction to the multicultural cities shaped by migration; or as a selfish defence of their own share of the national welfare state that is supposedly to be sustained by keeping others away; or as a pathetic effort to paint some economic resources with national colours against the dynamics of international capitalism. In some cases nationalism appears as cultural conservatism, obsessed with the imposition of national identity despite truncated traditions. In many coalition governments in Europe the neo-liberal market fundamentalists and privatization crusaders clash with the nationalists who act as cultural conservatives and identity protectors. In post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, where the emergence of new national states became almost a cottage industry in the 1990s, efforts at speeded up nation building used all means, from language purification to ethnic cleansing, and included monument removal and monument restitution, street-name changes, and new flags, seals and symbols marketed as old traditional glory. Theatre in most countries was not among the main concerns of the nationalist forces. Occasionally, nationalist parties sought to appoint some of their trusted people to lead the key national cultural institutions, including National Theatres, and pack their boards with loyalists but other political parties attempted exactly the same. Nationalists displayed a propensity to criticize the globalized cultural industry and its products as dangerous foreign kitsch while producing their own nationalist, domestic kitsch, mainly in a primitive, pre-industrial manner. For example, most nationalist politicians realized, together with their political opponents, that control over the National Theatre or the national museum does not automatically deliver votes and yet costs much more than it can bring into the party safe box. They concentrated thus on the media and sought to appropriate, control and exploit them for the sake of propagandistic effect and earning potential. This is still the main interest of the nationalist forces. The Polish right-wing government, created in 2006, did not seek to endear itself to the Theater Stary in Cracow or control Theater Rozmaitoszcsi in Warsaw but to embrace the militant Catholic and rabidly anti-Semitic station Radio Maria.

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Conclusion: theatre and European civil society In general, theatre matters less across Europe as a cultural force and as a public platform than it did a century or two ago and is thus of much less interest to nationalists, or any other militant ideology, than before. Politics has become primarily a mastery of media control and its impact – as Berlusconi’s career symbolizes. Nationalist pressures and appropriations are not the primary concern of theatres in Europe today. While commercial theatre thrives and will continue to thrive, quality theatre depends on the continuity of public subsidy and therefore faces the indifference of politicians and a cultural distancing from many potential audiences as its main challenges. Theatres that grasp these challenges will drop the National Theatre label as an anachronistic status symbol and stop hiding behind its supposed prestige. They will lose credibility if they perpetuate indifference towards the cultural diversity issues and continue to evade the inclusion of other ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups on stage, behind the stage and in the auditorium. However, if they transform their repertory system to a variety of alternative organizational models and production patterns and replace the smorgasbord notion of the repertory with more focused and profiled programming, derived from a critical analysis of the reality rather than from a bookshelf of old plays, those theatres can hope to reconnect with their culturally diverse local constituencies and creative peers across Europe and serve as a platform for reflection and critical thinking in an emerging Europe-wide civil society. By recognizing the withering of the nation-state and recognizing their own capacity to enhance intercultural competence over national tradition, such theatres may become a force shaping a notion of European citizenship, especially in the growing practice of bilateral and multilateral international co-productions.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Geert Sels, ‘Landschapsschets theater’ (Brussels: VTI, 2006), www.vti.be/node/50 Kazimierz Braun (1996). Tamas Koltai (1999). Dragan Klaic (ed.), (1997). H. van Maanen and S. E. Wilmer (eds.) (1998). Dragan Klaic (2002). Marc Pichter and Charles Landry (2001). Ruud Engelander (ed.) (2000), Theater als system, een herbezinning/Theatre as a System, a Reconsideration (Amsterdam: TIN). 9. See Hans-Thies Lehmann (1999/2006).

20 The Role of National Theatres in an Age of Globalization Janelle Reinelt

‘Something unique is afoot in Europe, in what is still called ‘Europe’ even if we no longer know very well what or who goes by this name’ Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading

This volume has so far focused largely on the past: the history and traditions of National Theatres, and how they have evolved through time. I want aggressively to move us into the future: what, if any, is the role of National Theatres now, and what is the relationship between individual nations and the evolving and emerging ‘New Europe’ – and beyond that – between individual European nations and the phenomenon known as globalization? Each of these terms is, of course, contested; perhaps the debatable idea of a new Europe is especially so – with its question of what Europe should now become and how it should see itself in what Barbara Sušec Michieli identifies as a present moment of ethnopluralism and transnationalism (see chapter 17 in this volume). My argument has three aspects: that questions of national identity will continue to persist within and outside of National Theatre buildings; that European performances will inevitably address ‘Europe’ as well as their countries of origin; and that globalization is intertwined with any remaining notions of National Theatres. At the symposium held in Dublin in 2005 on the topic of National Theatres in Europe, Fintan O’Toole remarked in his opening address, ‘Theatre pretends that a nation exists, at least for the duration of the theatre piece.’ I want to recall his clever and insightful comment in order to develop the idea that whether the theatre in question is an architectural structure specifically legitimated as a ‘National’ culture house, or whether it is produced by alternative theatre groups receiving no governmental support at all, both theatres can pretend that a nation exists. This pretence becomes performative when the assembled audience is addressed – or even implied – as a national citizenry. Reciprocally, audiences can receive and interpret a given performance as commenting on or relevant to national identity, whether the artists responsible 228

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for the performance intended this connection or not. Loren Kruger may be right when she says that the assembly of actual material bodies in the theatre is a more potent invocation of a nation than the widely dispersed readership of print culture described by Benedict Anderson. It can create a form of Althusserian hailing in which audiences are hailed as citizens, employing a familiar form, ‘Hey, you …who, me? …Yes, you …you Finn, or Greek, or Hungarian, or Scot.’1 In the hailing, however, a certain slippage can take place, for one can imagine oneself to be a citizen for the purpose of the fiction, but not really hold the passport, or one may address a citizenship that is itself contested. Naturalization consists of admitting an alien to the privileged category of citizen. When Naturalization ‘takes’, it produces a convincing performance of national identity. It becomes performative in J.L. Austin’s sense: repetition strengthens the take and pushes away alternatives.2 Thus the institutions of National Theatres are not the only focal points for the institutionalization of national identity through performance. If the previous functions of National Theatres such as identity formation and critique are carried out in other venues, as well as or in place of an actual National Theatre, perhaps it is more useful to conceptualize a network of theatrical sites that produce national identity. The primacy of any given National Theatre may come and go, but questions about national identity and the ‘spirit of the nation’ are not likely to be exhausted anytime soon – in this I disagree with Dragan Klaic’s perception that these notions ‘have become worn out and deprived of consensual meaning’ (see chapter 19). While these conceptions of nation are not static, and need contestation and imagination if they are to continue to be meaningful, the desire to engage with them and the political and social ramifications of potential formulations seem both obdurate and increasingly pronounced. The latest public debates in the UK about what it means to be British and the tension between a policy of multiculturalism and that of assimilation have found their way on to UK stages (not only, although certainly, at the Royal National Theatre), and this issue is by no means limited to the UK but finds echoes in most other European countries with large immigrant groups. After 9/11 and its aftermath, these debates escalated as anti-Muslim attitudes have increased, and asylum-seekers and refugees have increasingly become targets for nationalist anger. The Danish cartoon controversy illustrated tensions within Danish culture, but also, in its lightning-spread across the rest of Europe, catalyzed other countries’ citizens to examine their own perceptions concerning these matters and their country’s conduct concerning similar issues of representation. When Nick Hytner, Artistic Director of the Royal National Theatre (UK), commissioned David Edgar to write Playing with Fire, he knew Edgar would be writing a play about how best to govern a multiracial city, but he could not have predicted the escalation in racial tensions following the London bombings in July 2005, nor the controversy surrounding the production and closing of Behzti at Birmingham Repertory

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Theatre in 2004.3 By the time Edgar’s play opened in 2005 however, it was impossible not to read it through this newly complex and urgent field of associations. The National Theatre thus played a part in furthering public examination and awareness of issues of inclusion, oppression, security, and identity brought forward in its play and in recent public life; it functioned, however, through a certain serendipitous if awful chance, as only one theatrical institution among others that grappled with these issues – arguably, at least, a flagship one. The argument so far has been aimed at broadening the idea of a National Theatre beyond the specific institution or planned occurrence that goes by that name in order to observe that in its local address to citizens (actual and hypothetical), theatre inevitably constructs national questions and commentary – especially when provoked by contemporary public events. Further, many of the nations of Europe are experiencing similar crises of identity, civil society and security brought about by heightened international tensions, (especially concerning ‘terrorism’, increased pressure to develop successful balances between multicultural and assimilationist strategies of public governance, and economic and pan-European initiatives that alternatively stimulate and aggravate EU identification or isolationism). It is no surprise, then, that theatrical representation that addresses these crises in one context can easily be related by analogy to other European contexts. Nor does the subject matter of these national but also pan-European dramas always need to be related directly to current events in order to play simultaneously as local and more broadly European. The Needcompany, which originates in Belgium, tours widely throughout Europe (and beyond), offering their devised performances in multiple languages (French, English, Flemish). In Isabella’s Room (2004–7), artistic director Jan Lauwers combined a personal response to his father’s death with an examination of European colonialism and twentieth-century history. Sometimes the eponymous Isabella seems French (although her last name, Morandi, might be Italian); sometimes the performance refers directly to the Belgian Congo and the Europeans of Belgium’s colonial past. Through Isabella’s long life, Lauwers represents pan-European identity. This performance was developed knowing in advance it would tour the international festival circuit, and was a co-production of the Avignon Festival and the Basel Theatre Festival, as well as of other producers in France, Canada, and the US.4 Many other companies similarly know they will work across Europe and abroad. Coming from them, then, are original productions which on the one hand construct a ‘new’ European audience, inviting them to think in terms of a common past or sometimes a possible common future, and on the other hand, re-establish a national identity through performances that remain associated with their country of origin when they are performed in festivals or other countries’ art venues. Ironically, Needcompany may seem more of a National Theatre than the stages described in Frank Peeters’ account (in chapter 9

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of this volume) of rival linguistic traditions within official Belgian theatre history. One possible distinction among European National Theatres might be the contrast between those of France, Great Britain, and others that face challenges to broaden and rethink the notions of national identity they have been staging for centuries, and those nations newly constituted or re-constituted in light of the geopolitical reorganization following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Edgaras Klivis notes (in chapter 18 of this volume) on the situation in Lithuania, an absence of a National Theatre tradition can lead to a crisis of legitimation for what he ironically calls ‘the void institution’. Enormous changes in economy, government, and social organization coming in countries such as Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, or Poland, moreover, not only pose questions of national identity in terms of the status of a (National) Theatre to be created or revitalized – but also in terms of national myths, narratives, and traditions in the light of mass media and the increasingly globalized culture experienced since the 1990s. Luule Epner offers an example of this challenge to traditional materials in Estonia concerning the The Werewolf, a play from 1912 by August Kitzberg, considered one of Estonia’s core texts that functions as national myth. Two new productions of the play in 1992 and 1998 reworked traditional materials representing the Werewolf/Other to fashion an alternative, ‘new, unfamiliar, and cosmopolite identity of a contemporary Estonian’.5 Through fragmenting and ironizing the national myth, these productions kept it alive at the same time – repeating it with a difference. The redefinition of ‘other’, the problematic of postmodern fractured subjectivity, and the prevalence of the media (there were video screens and TV on stage) confronted a national heritage with the challenge of the globalized context.6 The theatre producing this obviously ‘national’ drama, it should be noted parenthetically, was not a ‘National Theatre’ but rather the first private theatre in Estonia, founded in 1992.7 On the other hand, while the former Soviet bloc nations may share particularly acute experiences of recent change, they share with other European countries an awareness of European transformation and redefinition in the new millennium. The fluid membership of the EU and the recent failure to produce an acceptable and legitimate constitution have provided external pressures on all these countries, re-animating the question, ‘What is a European?’ in the same breath as the national questions, ‘What is a German? A Dane? A Latvian? A Czech?’ Theatre will inevitably be bound up in this dynamic, especially concerning issues of repertoire, language and translation, and cultural inheritances. Many countries in Europe are now facing unprecedented diversity, national policy debates about immigration, conflict concerning the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. These are not at all the same questions, and they will not take the same forms in all countries. But it is possible for National Theatres to tackle the question of who

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are the citizens to whom issues of nation are addressed. A conference held at the University of Manchester in September 2007 took as its theme, ‘Creolizing Europe’ featuring, in the words of the Call for Papers, ‘contributions which seek critical understandings of postcolonial, creolized and multicultural Europe.’8 One could project this as an ambitious theme for a number of National Theatre seasons. Part of the reason why National Theatres and national identities remain robust is that they are inevitably the foil of globalization. In spite of some theoreticians who predict the withering of the nation-state, ‘nation’ constitutes the other term which helps clarify the nature of globalization itself. As Fredric Jameson writes, globalization ‘is an untotalizable totality which intensifies binary relations between its parts.’9 As part of this struggle, National Theatres in many places do continue as a locus for the exercise of power, either in connection with overt state power or through wielding the more elusive and pervasive cultural capital that saves, displays, and produces power. As Rikard Hoogland and Willmar Sauter point out in their contribution to this volume (chapter 13), sometimes governments rather than peoples want National Theatres – social democrats as well as kings can use theatre as part of their consolidation and symbolization of state authority and cultural value. When established National Theatres with lots of resources produce their repertory, they are in the position of claiming to speak for the nation, about the nation. They are players in the national game, whether they are a mouthpiece for the current government, or in radical opposition to it. National Theatres can also be a means of fighting back against what nations have lost in economic power. Governments have turned to ‘culture’ as a primary way of asserting identity in an international context. Just as nations constitute markets for global capitalism, nations also market cultural products in the global arena. Writing about this phenomenon, playwright David Greig has commented on government sponsored playwriting workshops in which writers like him are sent out on behalf of the British Council: ‘It is part of the business of the contemporary British playwright to travel about the world on behalf of the British Council doing workshops. For the playwright it is an interesting way to travel and for the British Council it’s a way to parlay the good name of British theatre into small amounts of desperately needed political capital in those many parts of the world where our name is mud, or worse.’10 Nations are name brands in the global economic circuitry and theatres put the brands in the limelight. In the case David Grieg describes, he is not a direct representative of the Royal National Theatre (in fact, as a Scot, he is more directly involved in the new project of a Scottish National Theatre), but for the British Council that sends him out to do workshops, he is a Royal National Theatre product. Jen Harvie has recently traced the changes in British cultural policy aimed at achieving heightened national visibility, describing ‘the mixed effects of New Labour’s paradigm shift from the long-standing regional/metropolitan models of analysis and funding to

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a new model which emphasizes – and rebrands – the nations, whether that is the overarching new “Cool Britannia” or the smaller nations of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.’11 A number of nations that have prospered economically in an era of globalization have also, of course, been diminished in other ways. The Irish Republic is dubbed the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and imagined as highly prosperous in its new ‘boom time’. As Eamonn Slater observes, ‘the whole world is contained within Ireland and Ireland enjoys direct access to global flows, exchanges and structures’,12 but what this actually entails as corollary is that globalization mediatizes and reduces re-presentations of national identity in such a way that Ireland may experience economic plentitude, but the price may be the homogenization and packaging of its own history and traditions.13 The Irish National Theatre has been overtly involved in the construction and maintenance of Irish identity since its inception, and Irish drama has always been received around the world in terms of representations of Irishness. Now, in the work of contemporary Irish writers, the theatre has taken up the question of its representiveness. As Nicholas Grene writes, ‘The disposition within the drama to represent in Irish life what is symptomatic of Irish life can be attributed in general terms to the colonial/postcolonial consciousness which leaves the question of national identity always an issue.’14 In a recent article, Catherine Rees discusses Martin McDonagh’s plays alongside other Irish writing from the 1990s which demonstrate that Irish national identity has eroded under globalization. McDonagh shows how globalization undermines ‘the lives of the communities in his plays, leading to a detachment from their past and a loss of identity with their nationality. But he also seems to explore how this effect is felt in the wider sense, and goes some way to answering the question, can national theatre survive the threat of globalization.’15 Rees’s conviction is that globalization actually creates a more violent and brutal form of nationalism, reinventing it ‘angrier and bloodier than before’.16 Catherine Rees’s choice of Martin McDonagh may at first seem strange, given that he was born in England and has not ever lived in Ireland, although his parents live in Galway and he spent successive summers there as a boy. Rees conflates the actual Irish National Theatre with Irish playwrights – including this second-generation one – for purposes of her argument (as I also did with David Greig earlier in this essay, blurring his Scottishness in terms of his Britishness). This demonstrates the way a particular institution operates in consort with other cultural factors and personages to create the arena of national theatre, rather than one particular site – the first claim of this chapter. When discussing National Theatres, it often becomes necessary – and useful – to make use of this larger concept. In this case, McDonagh’s first theatre trilogy was initially produced by Druid, a Galway-based theatre company headed by Garry Hines, while his subsequent plays have opened in London. This production history complicates the perception of him as outsider.

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Second, Rees presents McDonagh’s theatre as an accurate representation of the dangers of globalization and the damage done to national identity. Often accused of exaggerating and ridiculing Irishness and Irish identity, in this reading McDonagh emerges instead as someone able to accurately describe the damaging effects of globalization on the nation: ‘Thus, McDonagh is deconstructing and condemning already existing imagery, and the burden of moral responsibility lifts slightly; he is not providing stereotypical stage Irishmen and women for English audiences’ titillation, he is reconstructing the process by which they have already become mythologized and pilloried.’17 As such, a (non)native son fights back against this damage, making it visible to its citizens, capable of critique and possibly of counter-strategies. For these purposes, National Theatres may circulate as a globalized cultural product, but their most trenchant utility may be at home – addressing their own body of citizens as representations of national life in this present moment, and the National Theatre in Ireland (which to date has never staged McDonagh’s work), may be the most important site for the performance of his plays. The urgent issue for this moment is to what extent National Theatres are capable of questioning the very adequacy of their own concept, while simultaneously transforming the focus on nation to a focus on the nation in relation to a larger European identity on one hand, and an international identity that puts ‘European’ in play vis à vis other continents and countries, on the other. This opportunity is related to Michael Coveney’s hunch that theatre has now, in contradistinction to mass media, ‘a chance to redress the balance, fight for artistic and civic virtue, as well as reflect the faults and failures of our society.’ (see chapter 15). If National Theatres and other artists and performances perceived as ‘national’ can create such an alternative to globalizing mass media, this must surely be seen as positive. Remarking on the concept of legitimation, Pirkko Koski points in her chapter to the Finnish case, where in the nineteenth century it was not the government but the people who wanted to establish a notion of Finnish culture through having a National Theatre. As she describes it, they had the ambition of joining the cultured nations, and raised money in country towns toward the project. (see chapter 8). In European nations today, citizens may have such aspirations for a cultural identity in relation to other nations. Ireland and Estonia have served as particular examples here, but citizens of many countries take pride – or at least partisan interest – in their cultural identity. If this popular sentiment can be exploited to invigorate a re-examination of national identity in relationship to the global context without creating a new chauvinism, Coveney may well be right that live performance is a potentially powerful medium for this task. This seems to be the case with the new National Theatre of Scotland. I have been downplaying the role of National Theatres in this chapter, even though it sits nestled within a book on National Theatres. Mainly, I have been uneasy proclaiming that they are valuable or successful sites of national identity construction – both because of the risks of elite and homogenous

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representation and because I truly believe that national identity is created, staged, and perceived in many different places and contexts, not only in official sites. However I do think that the idea of a National Theatre can be, and historically has been, a powerful stimulation to Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’, and that in the right circumstances, it can function as a radical democratic institution. In the case of Scotland, the successful devolution campaign and referendum in 1997 and the establishment of a Scottish parliament two years later created a new climate of democratic process and national redefinition. It appears that the National Theatre of Scotland has been poised to contribute substantially to these projects. The absence of a building and therefore of a large investment in real estate has been a defining aspect of this project, its most obvious feature of differentiation from the Royal National Theatre or the Irish National Theatre.18 The innovative idea of opening the first season (2006) with ten productions designed for different kinds of spaces in different parts of the country immediately invokes a nation in its entirety and specificity. HOME, the overarching title, was designated by location, ‘HOME Aberdeen,’ or ‘HOME Caithness’ and so on for site-specific events that took place in a tower block, a glass factory, a disused shop, and many other locations. It was not the first idea of this kind, however, as the participatory events of the Making of the Nation Programme in 1999 already established a wide demographic conversation through performance about the new parliament and democratic governance more generally, spread out through several projects and extended via the internet throughout Scotland.19 The emphasis on theatre for young people that marked the first year of the NTS is another indicator of a democratic impulse to broaden the reach of the nation to include children that are growing up in the midst of the national moment. For this does appear to be an extraordinary time of national activism. The Scottish National Party won the elections in May 2007 and in the run-up, its leader, Alex Salmond, had proposed calling for a referendum on independence. According to a number of polls before the election, over 50 per cent of the population was in favour of independence.20 The huge counter-campaign by Labour stressed economic reasons why such a move would be a disaster for Scotland and after the elections, although the SNP won, the enthusiasm for independence has somewhat subsided to 31% in the latest opinion poll. In a White Paper issued on August 14 2007, Salmond celebrated the Party’s first 100 days and called for a referendum, but backed off from a firm timetable. This constitutes a climate in which a theatre calling itself ‘national’ has an opportunity to address pressing socio-political matters and take part in defining what the nation will actually become. Adrienne Scullion has made the case that already in the 1990s, a self-aware and politically savvy number of young Scottish theatre-makers took up the possibilities for articulating a new national agenda through performance: ‘Increasingly aware of the significance of representation in a culture in political flux, and of limited financial

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resources, Scottish theatre-makers were willing to experiment with historical and geographical settings and with character and narrative conventions. They proved themselves able to challenge the orthodoxies of what it might mean to write a Scottish play and to make theatre in and of Scotland.’21 Under the artistic direction of Vicky Featherstone, the National Theatre of Scotland has consolidated its embodiment of a mobile, self-reflexive democratic art form. In an interview with David Greig, she strongly emphasized the mandate to create new work and to embrace the future as the horizon of possibility and definition. Asked how NTS will be different from the British NT or the Swedish NT, she replied, ‘It will be more about future work rather than about heritage. It’s about taking the best from a culture and being able to forge new work. It’s probably going to be one of the most forwardlooking, outward-looking national theatres.’22 Visiting the website, it is also apparent that international links and programming are an explicit part of her vision. My chapter has insisted on an acknowledgment of the need to explore the relationships between globalization and nation-states, and also to posit a European subject as well as a national subject. The NTS seems able to construct itself as both an agent of Scottish nationalism and an agent of European democracy. The recent agitation for independence in some quarters will undoubtedly provide a new challenge to the theatre to chart its path in relation to that sentiment. Part of the liability in the notion of National Theatres is simply the notion of nationalism itself. Many of us (theatre scholars) would think that nationalism has been the negative impulse behind too much of the last century’s aggressions. Preserving the past is, however, neither necessarily conservative nor progressive in political terms. Continuing to honour but also to examine and critique a body of drama associated with a national past is a perfectly valid aim – not just for official National Theatres but also for any theatres identifying with nations. Featherstone has commented on this issue explicitly in her Manifesto on the NTS website: ‘It is not, and should not be, a jingoistic, patriotic stab at defining a nation’s identity through theatre. In fact, it should not be an opportunity to try to define anything. Instead, it is the chance to throw open the doors of possibility, to encourage boldness. I hope our programme goes some way to realising these ambitions. I hope we will make Scotland proud.’23 Now, ‘making Scotland proud’ has more than a bit of a ring of patriotism in it, but at least in knowing and naming a kind of National Theatre she does not want to create, Featherstone establishes a self-reflexive gesture that can become part of the ongoing programme. Thus it seems to me that in this time, and in this dispersed and varied place, a National Theatre might be a vibrant and extremely appropriate institution. I propose to finish with a general question that could and should face all theatres that purport to represent, in their building, their repertory, or perhaps only inadvertently, their nation: How can a productive tension between

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past and present create a theatre that provokes the social imagination to posit a viable future? This future must be one conceived of in global terms, in relation to other cultures, languages, customs, values, and traditions. Given an anxiety about maintaining national identity and the need to transcend it – an anxiety that I think is fairly widespread among the educated middleclass theatre goers who are the most common National Theatre audience members, and are also the professional and managerial classes most likely to develop and implement national socio-cultural policies and services – the theatre seems a potentially fruitful site for staging these anxieties and exploring some possible configurations for a global future. Whether it is an actual or a de facto ‘National Theatre’, one officially recognized as such in name or rather in consequence, will remain to be seen and will certainly differ among nations.

Notes 1. See Althusser’s notions of ideology working through state apparati and his concept of interpellation in Louis Althusser (1971). 2. J. L. Austin (1962). 3. The riots and closure in December 2004 of Behzti, by the Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre were a highly debated series of events. The Sikhs protesting against the play objected to the representation of a rape within a Sikh temple (gurdwara). 4. For more information, see the company website at www.needcompany.org (accessed 2 November 2006). 5. Luule Epner (2005). 6. In addition, following its Independence, Estonia had experienced rapid changes in the cultural status of theatre typical of the post-Soviet era as newly ‘free’ mass media became dominant; the number of regular theatre-goers decreased considerably from 88 per cent in 1985 to 44 per cent in 1998. See Anneli Saro (2004), p. 347. 7. Anneli Saro, ‘Von Krahl Theatre Revisiting Estonian Cultural Heritage,’ Sign System Studies 33.2 (2005): 405. 8. See http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/centres/mdcsn/conferences (accessed 1 September 2007). 9. Fredric Jameson, ‘Preface,’ In Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds) (1998), p. xii. 10. David Greig (2006). 11. Jen Harvie (2005), p. 17. On Scotland specifically, see also Matthew Reason (2006). 12. Quoted in Catherine Rees (2006). 13. Matthew Reason has argued along similar lines that Glasgow’s Year of Culture in 1990 participated in shaping now-dominant discourses of enterprise and consumption that work together with globalizing tendencies toward homogenization (Reason, op.cit., pp. 73–85). 14. Nicholas Grene (1999), p. 267. 15. Rees, op.cit., p. 119. 16. Rees, op.cit., p. 122. 17. Rees, op.cit., p. 124.

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18. Ruaridh Nicoll characterizes this as ‘brilliant’, in a column calling attention to the successes of the first season: ‘The brilliant first decision was that it wouldn’t have an auditorium to call home. . . .Meanwhile, NTS’s managers made it plain that they would accept no ‘dirty money’ – cash taken from the budgets of other Scottish theatres.’ In ‘Our Leaders aren’t Playing their Part in a Theatrical Triumph.’ The Guardian, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/O„1890433,00.html (accessed 17 January 2007). 19. Scullion’s essay (2004) gives a good overview of Scottish theatre before the actual NTS project, and shows how artists prepared the ground for the possibility of a novel, unconventional approach to founding a NT. 20. Angus Macleod, ‘Labour Plans Scots Blitz to Save Union’, The Times http://www. timesonline.co.uk/article/0„17129-2548789,00.html (accessed 22 January 2007) 21. Scullion, op.cit., p. 471. 22. ‘Vicky Featherstone Interviewed by David Grieg’, Backpages, Contemporary Theatre Review 15.1 (2005): 182. 23. http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s7_7 (accessed 22 January 2007).

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Carlson, Marvin (1989), Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Carlson, Marvin (1994), ‘Nationalism and the Romantic Drama in Europe’, in Romantic Drama, Vol. II in the Romanticism subseries of the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. (International Comparative Literature Association), pp. 139–52. Carroll, Clare and Patricia King (eds.) (2003), Ireland and Postcolonial Theory. (Cork: Cork University Press). Cerwinske, Laura (1990), Russian Imperial Style. (New York: Wings Books). Crane, D., N. Kawashima and K. Kawasaki (eds.) (2002), Global Culture, Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization. (New York and London: Routledge). Dimmick, John (2003), Media Competition and Coexistence: The Theory of the Niche. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). De Grazia, Victoria (1981, new ed. 2002), The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy. (Cambridge: University Press). Delgado, Maria M. (2003), ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Dharwadker, Aparna (2005), Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and Urban Performance in India since 1947. (Iowa City: Iowa University Press). Dunnage, Jonathan (2002), Twentieth Century Italy: A Social History. (London: Pearson). Elsom, John and Nicholas Tomalin (1978), The History of the National Theatre. (London: Jonathan Cape). Epner, Luule (2005), ‘Redefining National Identity by Playing with Classics’, Sign System Studies 33, 2. Fanon, Frantz (2005), The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox. (New York: Grove Press). Finkielkraut, Alain (1995), The Defeat of the Mind. (New York: Columbia University Press). Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004), History of European Drama and Theatre, trans. Jo Riley. (London and New York: Routledge). Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2005), Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. (London and New York: Routledge). Flanagan, Hallie ([1940] 1985), Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre. (New York: Limelight). Franklin, Simon and Emma Widdis (eds.) (2004), National Identity in Russian Culture. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Frazier, Adrian (1990), Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre. (Berkeley: University of California Press). Gellner, Ernest (1983), Nations and Nationalism. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Gounaridou, Kiki (ed.) (2005), Staging Nationalism: Essays on Theatre and National Identity. (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland Publishers). Greig, David (2006), ‘Doing a Geographical’, Contemporary Theatre Review (special issue on Globalization and Theatre) 16,1. Grene, Nicholas (1999), The Politics of Irish Drama. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Harris, Susan Canon (2002), Gender and Modern Irish Drama. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Harvie, Jen (2005), Staging the UK. (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

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Hashamova, Yana (2006), ‘Two Visions of a Usable Past in (Op)position to the West: Michalkov’s The Barber of Siberia and Sokurov’s Russian Ark’, The Russian Review, 65 (April): 250–65. Hemmings, F.W.J. (1994), The Theatre and the State in France, 1750–1905. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Herr, Cheryl (2001), For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas 1890–1925. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press). Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.) (1983), The Invention of Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hosking, Geoffrey (1997), Russia: People and Empire; 1552–1917. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press). Hunt, Hugh (1979), The Abbey: Ireland’s National Theatre, 1904–1978. (New York: Columbia University Press). Jameson, Fredric and Masao Miyoshi (1998), The Cultures of Globalization. (Durham NC: Duke University Press). Johansson, Ola et al. (2001), ‘ “It’s the real thing”: Performance and Murder in Sweden’, European Review 9, 3 (July): 319–37. Kelly, John and Ronald Schuchard (eds.) (1994), The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, III. 1901–1904. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kimball, Stanley Buchholz (1964), Czech Nationalism: A Study of the National Theatre Movement, 1845–83. (Urbana: Illinois University Press). Klaic, Dragan (ed.) (1997), Reform or Transition. The Perspectives of Repertory Theater in Central and Eastern Europe. (New York: OSI). Klaic, Dragan (2002), ‘Vitality and Vulnerability: Performing Arts in Europe’ in Creative Europe. On the Governance and Management of Artistic Creativity in Europe, ed. Danielle Cliche et al. (Bonn: ERICarts). Klivis, Edgaras (2005), ‘Blood and Soil: Virtual Body of the Nation on Stage’, in The Human Body – a Universal Sign, ed. Wiesna Mond-Kozlowska. (Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press). Koltai, Tamas (1999), ‘Theater and Politics before and after 1989’, in Tradition and Innovation in Modern Hungarian Theater, ed. Judith Csaki. (Budapest: ITI Hungarian Center). Koski, Pirkko (1998), ‘Four Languages – Four Attitudes Toward Nationalism and the Theatre? Helsinki at the Turn of the Century’, in Teater i Mittnorden under 1800–talets senare del. Material, metoder och analyser. (Umeå: Umeå Universitet). Kruger, Loren (1992), The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France and America. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Kruger, Loren (2003), ‘History Plays (in) Britain: Dramas, Nations, and Inventing the Present’, in Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History, ed. W. B. Worthen with Peter Holland. (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan). Leach, Robert and Victor Borovsky (eds) (1999), A History of Russian Theatre. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Leerssen, Joep (2000), ‘The Rhetoric of National Character: A Programmatic Survey’, Poetics Today 21, 2: 267–289. Lehmann, Hans-Thies, (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Juers-Munby. (London: Routledge). (Translated from the 1999 German publication Postdramatisches Theater, (Frankfurt/M: Verlag der Antoren). Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (2003), Nathan the Wise, Minna Von Barnhelm, and other Plays and Writings, ed. Peter Demetz. (New York: Continuum).

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Index Althusser, Louis, 198 Alyoshin, Samuil, 132 Amico, Silvio d’, 138 and National Theatre proposals, 141 Anderson, Benedict, 14, 39, 57, 100, 229, 235 anti-apartheid movement, 44 Anttonen, Pertti J, 106 Antwerp, National Theatre of, 113–14 Arab world, and National Theatres, 26–7 architecture and Balkan National Theatres, 200 and Nationaltheatret, 86 see also Alexandrinsky Theatre Aricò, Salvatore, 147 Arkadyev, Mikhail, 128, 130–1 Arnim, Achim von, 14–15 Arnold, Matthew, 183 Asia, and National Theatres, 24 Aspelin-Haapkylä, E, 101 assembly and national becoming, 39 and nationhood, 39, 229 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 24 Austin, J L, 229 Australia, 24–5 autocratic government, and National Theatres, 9 Azeglio, Massimo d’, 139

Aasen, Ivar, 88 Abadjieva, L, 191 Abbey Theatre (Irish National Theatre), 3, 9, 184 and admission prices, 80, 81 and artistic aims, 75 and cultural nationalism, 15, 75 and description of, 73 and establishment of, 23 as first state-subsidized theatre, 24 and frames of study of, 74 and funding of, 79, 80 and Griffith’s grudging welcome of, 78–9 and Horniman, 79 and Irish nationalism, 74–5, 81 and national identity, 16, 233 and nationalist/artistic tensions, 75–6 and nationalist attitudes towards, 77, 78 as National Theatre of Ireland, 23–4 and opening night, 73; absent plays, 78, 81; On Baile’s Strand, 76–7; Cathleen ni Houlihan, 79; Spreading the News, 81–2 and Protestant Anglo-Irish directorate of, 75, 80 and Yeats on principles of, 74 see also Irish National Theatre Society Ackermann, Konrad, 36, 42 Adler, Stella, 128 Africa and establishment of National Theatres, 24, 25–6 and transnational theatre, 45 Akhmatova, Anna, 123 Albania, 24 Aleksey Mikhailovich, Tsar of Russia, 64 Alexandrinsky Theatre, 3, 52, 66–7, 68–9, 71 and ‘From Traditionalism to a New Theatre’ project, 71 Algeria, 26 Alter, Robert, 106

Balkans as cliché, 197 as geographical term, 196 and national identity, 196 and National Theatres, 24; architecture, 200; ethnic designations, 198–200; European influence, 200; proliferation of, 197–8; ruling ideology, 198 and regional theatres, 54 Barba, Eugenio, 45 Barcelona, 30–1 Bärfuss, Lukas, 169 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 155, 158 245

246

Index

Barrie, J M, 183 Bartók, Béla, 15 Barton, John, 87 Bavarian State Theatre, 32 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin, 58 Bel Geddes, Norman, 144 Belgium, 55–6 and Koninklijke National Theater, 115, 116, 218–19 and Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, 117–18, 219 and language, 112 and national theatre culture, 111–12; language problem, 112, 114; problems with national locus for, 112–14; state funding, 114, 115 and National Theatre of Antwerp, 113–14 and ’new’ Belgians, 117, 219 and proclamation of independence, 111 and Théâtre de la Monnaie, 112–13 and Théâtre du Parc, 113 and unfeasibility of National Theatre, 116–17 Belgium National Theatre and foreign tours, 115 and foundation of, 56, 114 and models for, 115 and repertoire: initial inconsistency, 115; lack of national canon, 116 and separate linguistic companies, 115; different geographical focus of, 116 and state funding, 115 and unfeasibility of, 116–17 Belinsky, Vissarion, 65, 68 Bennett, Alan, 182 Bergbom, Kaarlo, 103, 104, 105 Bergman, Ingmar, 87, 133 Beria, Lavrenty, 129 Berlin and Cold War, 174–5 and German reunification, 173–4 Berliner Ensemble, 32, 33, 44, 45, 177 Berlin Freie Volksbühne, 43–4 Besson, Benno, 44 Bhabha, Homi, 38 Bharucha, Rustom, 45 Binding, Paul, 95–6

Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 229–30 Birnbaum, Nathan, 27 Bjørnson, Bjørn, 86, 90, 93, 94 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne, 16, 86, 89, 91, 93, 94 Blasetti, Alessandro, 144–5 Blue Blouse troupes (Soviet Union), 54 Bogusławski, Wojciech, 22 Bohemia, 16 Bokshanskaya, Olga, 132 Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, 67 Bond, Edward, 161 Bontempelli, Massimo, 145 Bottai, Giuseppe, 143 Bouffes du Nord, 45 Bourdieu, Pierre, 97 n3 Bove, Osip, 68 Boytchev, Hristo, 193 Brahm, Otto, 43 Braunschweig, Stéphane, 31 Brecht, Bertolt, 32, 45, 115, 177 Brentano, Clemens, 14–15 Bridie, James, 184 British Council, 232 British National Theatre, see National Theatre of Great Britain Brook, Peter, 45, 46 Brühl, Carl von, 42 Bryden, Bill, 184, 185 Buffini, Moira, 108 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 124, 125, 126, 128 Bulgarian National Theatre, 4, 188–9 and avoidance of the political, 193–4 and box-office success, 192–3 and continued importance of, 195 and directorial diversity, 190–1 and drama and puppetry, 191–2 and lack of national plays, 193 as ’People’s Theatre’, 194 and SFUMATO, 190–1 and structural reform, 189–90 and theatrical surprises, 193 Bull, Henrik, 86 Bull, Ole, 16, 86, 90 Burgtheater (Vienna), 1, 22 and foundation of, 9, 10, 12 Burke, Gregory, 185 Callow, Simon, 183 Calmeyer, Bengt, 96

Index Canth, Minna, 107 Carrière, Jean-Claude, 45 Castorf, Frank, 32–3 Catalan National Theatre, see Teatre Nacional de Cataluny (TNC) Catherine the Great, 64 Celtic Literary Society, 77 Central and Eastern Europe, and National Theatres, 219–20 and characteristics of, 52 and post-communist period, 220 and spread of concept, 22–3 Centre Dramatique de l’Est, 159 Centres Dramatiques Nationaux (CDN), 29, 30, 153–4, 157 Centres Dramatiques Nationaux Pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse (CDNEJ), 153–4 Centro Dramático Nacional (Spain), 30 Chekhov, Mikhail, 214 n1 Chénier, Marie-Joseph, 40 Chéreau, Patrice, 157 Chiarelli, Luigi, 141 Cholina, Andželika, 213 Chopin, Frédéric, 15 citizens, and cultural identity, 234 Citizens Theatre Glasgow, 184 civic responsibility, 181, 185–6 Collett, Camilla, 91 Comédie-Française, 1, 29, 52–3, 153 and establishment of, 9, 10, 22, 35, 40 and French Revolution, 40 and pressures for modernization, 156 as prototype of National Theatre, 22 and reform of, 161–2 and repertoire, 30 communication modes and idea of nation-state, 49, 50 and National Theatre, 56–9 communist theatre, see Soviet Union Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (Spain), 30 consumerism, and National Theatre, 59, 223 Convegno Volta, 138 court theatres, 10 Crimp, Martin, 108 Croatia, and National Theatre, 23 cultural essentialism, 14 cultural nationalism, 14–15

247

and Abbey Theatre, 75 and drama, 15 and establishment of National Theatres, 15 and folk culture, 14–15, 17 and repertory, 17–18 culture, and national identity, 232–3 Cumann na nGaedheal, 77 Czech National Theatre, 9, 38 and cultural nationalism, 15 and establishment of, 16 and linguistic identity, 17, 52 Dalberg, Freiherr Heribert von, 12 Daley, Arthur, 73 Daniel, L, 191 Daniel Soreno National Theatre, 25–6 decentralization and France, 29, 40–1, 55, 154 and National Theatres, 28–9, 53–4, 219 and Spain, 55 and Sweden, 164 see also regional theatres de Gaulle, Charles, 156 de Grazia, Victoria, 140 denationalization, and National Theatre, 55 Denmark, and cartoon controversy, 229 see also Royal Theatre (Copenhagen) Den Nationale Scene, 9, 90 and cultural nationalism, 15 and establishment of, 16, 23 and linguistic identity, 17 Derrida, Jacques, 228 Det Norske Teatret, 85, 97 and Nynorsk, 89 Deutsches Theater, 32, 33, 43, 44, 176, 177 Diderot, Denis, 36 Dingelstedt, Franz von, 12 Dobchev, I, 190 Dobronravov, Boris, 131 Doronia, Tatyana, 133 ’Dramaten’, see Royal Dramatic Theatre (Stockholm) Dresen, Adolf, 175, 176 Duse, Eleonara, 138 Dvoˇrák, Anton, 15 Dyur, Nikolai, 69

248

Index

Ecole Superieur d’Art Dramatique, 160 Edgar, David, 229–30 Edinburgh Festival, 185 Efremov, Oleg, 124, 132, 133 Egyptian National Theatre, 26 Elanskaya, Klavdiya, 131 Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, 64 Elkann, Alain, 146, 147 Engberg, Arthur, 166 England, and origins of National Theatre, 35 see also Great Britain; National Theatre of Great Britain Epner, Luule, 231 Espert, Nuria, 31 Estonia, and reinvigoration of national myth, 231 Europe and crises in, 230 and cultural identity, 234 and European identity and National Theatres, 231–2, 234 and pan-European drama, 230 European citizenship, and National Theatres, 227 European Union, 231 Eyre, Richard, 182 Fanon, Frantz, 34, 44 fascist theatre, see Italy Fay, Frank, 73, 76 Fay, William, 73 Featherstone, Vicky, 236 Federal Theatre of the United States, 41 feminism, and nationalism, 91 film, and influence of, 58 Findlater, Richard, 183 Finkielkraut, Alain, 14 Finland and city theatres, 108 and Finland’s Workers’ Theatre, 100 and Helsinki City Theatre, 104, 109 and language, 102, 104–5 and National Opera of Finland, 100, 103, 109; state funding, 103–4 and Pieni Suomi (’Small Finland’), 100, 109 and regional theatres, 29, 54 and Tampere Workers’ Theatre, 100; state funding, 104

see also Finland’s National Theatre; Swedish Theatre (Finland) Finland’s National Theatre, 9 and administration, 99 and cultural nationalism, 15 and establishment of, 16–17, 23 and identity of, 99 and linguistic identity, 17, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105 and national identity, 16 and national legitimacy, 100, 101, 104, 106–7, 108, 109 and national status of, 99, 109 and National Theatre Foundation, 101–2 and origins of, 101 and ownership of, 102 and programming of, 104 and repertoire, 105–8; contemporary foreign drama, 107; European tradition, 105–6; Modernism, 108; national canon, 106–7; national characters, 106; new Finnish drama, 108 and state funding, 103–4 and tradition/innovation balance, 100 Finland’s Workers’ Theatre, 100, 102 Finnish Theatre, 99, 101 see also Finland’s National Theatre Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 11 Flanagan, Hallie, 41 Flotats, Josep María, 31 Fokin, Valery, 71 folk culture, and cultural nationalism, 14–15, 17 Fosse, Jon, 95, 169 Fracchi, Umberto, 141 France and Centre Dramatique de l’Est, 159 and Centres Dramatiques Nationaux (CDN), 29, 30, 153–4, 157 and Centres Dramatiques Nationaux Pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse (CDNEJ), 153–4 and challenges to National Theatre model, 40–1 and decentralization of National Theatre, 29, 40–1, 55, 154, 219 and eighteenth-century cultural dominance, 22

Index and Maisons de la Culture, 154 and National Theatres, 162; broad definition of, 154; crisis in, 156; narrow definition of, 155; tripartite structure, 155–6 and Odéon, 158–9 and Odéon-Théâtre de France, 155, 158; ambiguous position of, 156 and Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, 153, 158–9 and reform of National Theatre: Comédie-Française, 161–2; European focus, 158, 159–60; national theatre schools, 160; Odéon-Théâtre de France, 158; Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, 158–9; Théâtre National de Chaillot, 157–8; Théâtre National de la Colline, 160–1; Théâtre National de Strasbourg, 159–60; Théâtre National Populaire, 156–7 and regional theatres, 56, 153–4 and structure of state-supported theatre, 162; complexity of, 155; National Dramatic Centres, 153–4; National Stages, 154; National Theatres, 153; political objectives, 162 and Théâtre Civique, 40, 41 and Théâtre de la Nation, 10, 22, 40 and Théâtre de la République, 40 and Théâtre de l’Est Parisien (TEP), 160–1 and Théâtre du Soleil, 154 and Théâtre National de Chaillot, 29, 153, 157–8 and Théâtre National de la Colline, 29, 153, 160–1 and Théâtre National de Strasbourg, 29, 31, 55, 153, 159–60 and Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), 25, 41, 43, 53, 154; effective disappearance of, 156–7; loss of direction, 156 and théâtre public, 155 see also Comédie-Française Françon, Alain, 161 Franklin, Simon, 63 Frayn, Michael, 108 Frazier, Aidan, 75

249

Free Russian Theatre, 67 Freie Volksbühne, 44 French Revolution, 21, 22 and Comédie-Française, 40 Gaelic League, 23 Gallen-Kallela, Akseli, 15 Garborg, Arne, 88, 89, 93, 97 Garborg, Hulda, 97 Garrett, Almeida, 23 Garrick, David, 180 Gellner, Ernest, 14, 209 Gémier, Firmin, 37, 41, 157 Germany and cultural nationalism, 14–15 and diversified theatre culture, 177–8 and institutional claims to National Theatre status, 41–4 and lack of National Theatre, 32–3, 173, 178, 218; political constraints, 173, 174 and linguistic identity, 17 and National Theatre in postwar period: East Germany, 176–7; West Germany, 174–6 and origins of National Theatre, 21–2, 35–7, 41–2, 173; Imperial theatres, 11–13 and political authority, 42–3 and reunification of, 173–4, 178 see also Berliner Ensemble; Deutsches Theater; Hamburg National Theatre; Mannheim National Theatre Geyts, Mikhail, 125, 127 Gielguid, John, 180 Gilbert, Roger, 157 Glasgow Repertory Theatre, 184 globalization and mass media, 58–9 and national identity, 232–4 and nationalism, 233 and National Theatres, 228, 232 and nation-state, 232–4 Goldenberg, Ariel, 158 Gonne, Maud, 76 Gossec, François, 40 Granville-Barker, Harley, 81, 184 Graužinis, Cezaris, 211 Great Britain and civic responsibility, 181, 185–6 and cultural policy, 232–3

250

Index

Great Britain (Contd.) and idea of National Theatre, 185–6 and late establishment of National Theatre, 28 and national theatre, 184 and television, 180 and touring musicals, 181 see also National Theatre of Great Britain Greece, and National Theatre, 24 Gregory, Lady Augusta, 15, 18, 23–4, 73, 80, 81, 184 Greig, David, 232, 236 Grene, Nicholas, 233 Grieg, Edvard, 15 Griffith, Arthur, 77 and Abbey Theatre, 78–9 on Synge, 77–8 Grimm, Jacob and WIlhelm, 15 Grotowski, Jerzy, 45 Gründgens, Gustav, 43 Guatemala, and National Theatre, 27–8 Gude, Hans, 15 Gustavus III, King of Sweden, 164, 165, 171 Guthrie, Tyrone, 24–5 Habima Theatre, 27, 33 n3, 35, 38 Hagen, Friedrich von der, 15 Hall, Peter, 182, 183 Hålogaland Teater, 29 Hamburg National Theatre, 1 and foundation of, 9, 11–12, 36, 42 and influence of, 12, 42 as prototype of National Theatre, 52 and repertoire, 11 Hamsun, Knut, 88, 95 Hare, David, 182 Harrower, David, 108 Harvie, Jen, 46, 232 Hashamova, Yana, 70 Hebrew, 27 Hebrew National Theatre, 35 Heiberg, Johannes, 90 Heiberg, Louise, 90 Helsinki City Theatre, 104, 109 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 14, 19, 37, 56 Hilpert, Heinz, 43 Hines, Garry, 233

Holberg, Ludvig, 10, 87, 93 Horn, Ellen, 92 Horniman, Annie, 73, 79, 80, 184 Hungary, 16 and establishment of National Theatre, 17, 23, 220 Hurley, Erin, 46 Hytner, Nicholas, 181, 182, 185, 229

Ibsen Festival, 86–7 Ibsen, Henrik, 18, 23 and Dano-Norwegian, 88, 89 and Nationaltheatret, 92, 94–5; Ibsen Festival, 86–7; opening night, 93; significance for, 96 and Norsk Teater, 90 and reputation of, 87 ideology and changing nature of National Theatre, 56 and new media, 57 Iffland, August Wilhelm, 12–13, 42 imagination, and nationhood, 57, 59 imagined community, 39, 57, 235 imperial theatres, 10–11, 52 and Russia, 64–5, 120; Alexandrinsky Theatre, 66–7 Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA), 35, 36–7, 44 international festivals, 2, 44 and Ibsen Festival, 86–7 and Lithuania, 206 international identity, and National Theatres, 234 Ionesco, Eugène, 133 Iraq, and National Theatre, 26 Ireland, and impact of globalization, 233 Irish Literary Theatre, 73 Irish National Theatre Society, 23, 73 and Abbey Theatre, 79–80 and cultural nationalism, 75 and language, 38 and nationalist/artistic tensions, 75 and Protestant Anglo-Irish directorate of, 75, 80 and splits in, 80 see also Abbey Theatre (Irish National Theatre) Irving, Henry, 180, 183

Index Israel, and National Theatre, 27 see also Habima Theatre Italy and attempts to establish National Theatre, 31–2, 146–7; Teatro Valle, 146–7 and lack of National Theatre, 218; pre-fascist period, 139–40 and national identity, lack of, 139–40 and Piccolo Teatro, 31, 32, 45, 146, 147 and Teatro di Roma, 31–2, 146, 147 and Teatro Valle, 32, 146–7; all-Italian repertory, 147 and theatre in fascist period, 54, 138; 18BL mass spectacle, 144–6; alternative model of National Theatre, 138–9, 143, 146; carri di tespi (‘thespian trucks’), 142–3; censorship, 140, 148 n7; debate over creation of National Theatre, 140–2; encouragement of, 140; functions of, 140; nation-building, 146; reaching the masses, 142–3; regulation of, 140; theatre of the masses, 143–6; theatrical nationhood, 139, 140 Ivanov, Vsevolod, 125–6 Ivaškeviˇcius, Marius, 211 Jahn, Hubertus F, 64, 65 Jameson, Fredric, 232 Janáˇcek, Leos, 15 Jaurès, Jean, 40 Jekov, Alexander, 191 Jelinek, Elfride, 169 Jessner, Leopold, 43 Jonson, Ben, 35 Josef II, Emperor, 12 Jotuni, Maria, 107 Jurašas, Jonas, 207, 208, 211, 212 Jurˇciˇc, Josip, 200 Kalinin, Mikhail, 125 Kane, Sarah, 169, 223 Karatygin, Vasilii, 69 Karge, Manfred, 44 Karl Theodor, Prince, 12 Kean, Edmund, 180 Kent, Nicholas, 181

251

Kenyan National Theatre, 25 Khmelyov, Nikolay, 126, 131 King’s Men, 35 Kirshon, Vladimir, 128 Kitzberg, August, 231 Kivi, Alexis, 18, 106, 107 Klopstock, Friedrich, 12 Knyazhnin, Yakov, 65 Kohout, Pavel, 132 Kongelige Teater, see Royal Theatre (Copenhagen) Koninklijke National Theater (KNS), 115, 116, 218–19 Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, 117–18, 219 Korean National Theatre, 24 Koršunovas, Oskaras, 210, 211, 213 Krenek, Ernst, 123 Kruger, Loren, 21, 25, 28, 32, 85, 106, 229 Kunˇcius, Herkus, 211 Laboratory Theatre, 45 Lambrev, N, 191 Lang, Alexander, 43 Langhoff, Matthias, 43, 44 Langhoff, Wolfgang, 43 Lang, Jack, 155, 157, 159 language and Arabic National Theatres, 26–7 and Belgium, 112, 115 and Finland, 99, 100, 104–5 and Irish National Theatre Society, 38 and Israeli National Theatre, 27 and national identity, 17 and National Theatre, 38 and Norway, 87–9, 97 Lassalle, Jacques, 161 Latënas, Faustas, 213 Latin America, and National Theatre, 27–8 Laube, Hans, 12 Lauwers, Jan, 230 Lavaudant, Georges, 159 Lavelli, Jorge, 161 Leerssen, Joep, 106 Leopold I, King of Belgium, 113 Leopold II, King of Belgium, 113 Lepage, Robert, 45, 46

252

Index

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 11–12, 21, 36, 42, 173 Le Théâtre National de Belgique, see Belgium National Theatre Lilar, Susan, 112 Lindsay, Robert, 184 Liszt, Franz, 15 Lithuania and debate over National Theatre, 208–9; two concepts of, 209 and lack of national theatrical tradition, 209–12 and LIFE festival, 206 and nationalism, 209 and questioning of state-funded theatre, 206–7 and stagnant national institutions, 206 and theatre reform: failure of, 207–8, 212–13; perestroika period, 212 Lithuanian Academic State Drama Theatre, 204 Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, 208 Lithuanian National Theatre as closed social institution, 214 and debate over establishment of, 208–9; two concepts of, 209 and foundation of, 204, 205 and ideas for organization of, 213 and inner legitimation, 205, 206 and lack of national theatrical tradition, 209–12 and national identity, 205 and role of: artistic collaboration, 212; encouragement of experimentation, 212; as network, 212 Lithuanian State Theatre, 204–5 Littlewood, Joan, 45, 115 Litvinov, Boris, 133 Lönnrut, Elias, 15 Louis XIV, King of France, 10, 52 Löwen, Johann Friedrich, 11, 36 Lumet, Louis, 40 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 122, 123, 124, 125 Lyrevik, Thomas, 169 Lyubimov, Yury, 129 MacBride, John, 76 McDonagh, Martin, 108, 233–4

Macedonia, and National Theatre, 24 McGrath, John, 185 Mácha, Karel, 15 McLuhan, Marshall, 57 Macpherson, James, 15 Magyar Theatre of Pest, 23 Mahabharatha, 45–6 Maisons de la Culture, 154 Malraux, André, 29, 30, 154, 158 Maly Theatre, 3, 52, 67–9, 71, 127 and Free Russian Theatre, 67 Mandelshtam, Osip, 123 Mann, Dieter, 43 Mannheim National Theatre, 12–13, 15 and influence of, 42 Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 10 Mariinskii Theatre, 67 Marker, Frederick, 87 Marker, Lise-Lone, 87 Market Theatre, 44 Markov, Pavel, 131–2 Markov, Pl, 191 Marlowe, Christopher, 35 Marsillach, Adolfo, 30 Martini, Ferdinando, 139 Massalitinov, Nikolay Osipovitch, 194 mass media and National Theatres as alternatives to, 234 and nation-state, 49, 58–9; globalization, 58–9; niche marketing, 59; print culture, 57–8 mass spectacles, 54 and fascist Italy, 144–6 and Imperial Russia, 64 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 40 Meyerhold Centre, 71 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 69, 122, 126–7, 128 Mickiewicz, Adam, 15, 209 Mikhailov, Andrei, 68 Mikhalsky, F N, 131 Miller, Arthur, 132 minority groups and National Theatres, 55–6 and niche marketing, 59 Mladenova, M, 190 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 154 Mochalov, Pavel, 68, 69 Moi, Toril, 96

Index Moran, D P, 80 Morash, Christopher, 74 Morfov, Alexander, 191, 192, 193 Morocco, and National Theatre, 28 Morozov, Savva, 121 Moscow Art Theatre, 3, 120 and censorship of, 122–3, 124, 127 and designated as academic theatre, 122 and division of, 133–4 and founding principles, 120 and funding of, 121 and goals of, 121 and government/party control of, 122–3, 124, 127, 130–1 as ’Moscow Aesthetic Theatre at Popular Prices’, 121 and nationalization of, 122 in post-Cold War era, 134 and postwar fossilization, 132 and renamed Gorky Academic Art Theatre, 127 and repertoire, 120–1; Armoured Train 14-69, 125–6; censorship of, 122–3, 124; invigoration of, 123; socialist realism, 129–30; Soviet propaganda, 125–6, 128–9 and Russian Revolution, 121–2 and Soviet criticism of, 125; Trotsky, 123 and Soviet histories of, 132–3 and sovietization of practices, 125–6 and Stalin, 125, 126–7, 129–30; glorification of, 130 in terror period, 130–1 Moskov, T, 191 Moskvin, Ivan, 131 Mrozek, Slawomir, 133 Mucha, Alphonse, 15 Müller, Heiner, 44 multiculturalism, and National Theatre, 55 Mürer, Annette, 92 Murray, Gilbert, 18 music, and cultural nationalism, 15 Mussolini, Benito, and Italian theatre, 138, 140, 143, 146 and theatre of the masses, 143–4 Mussorgsky, Modest, 15

253

Nakas, Audrius, 211 Napoleon I, 22, 57 nation and assembly, 39 and creation of, 36–7 and imagination, 57 and preceded by National Theatre, 34–5, 39 and theatrical nationhood, 36 Nationaal Toneel van België, see Belgium National Theatre national, and difference from nationalism, 188 national identity and anxiety over maintaining, 237 and continued importance of, 229 and cultural identity, 234 and cultural nationalism, 14, 19 and cultural policy, 232–3 and folk culture, 17–18 and globalization, 232–4 and language, 17 and National Theatres, 1, 2, 13–14, 202, 228, 229, 231, 234–5 and naturalization, 229 and performance of, 228–9 and theatre, 229, 230 nationalism, 2 and difference from the national, 188 and feminism, 91 and globalization, 233 and National Theatres, 13–19, 34–5, 236 and nature of, 226 and origins of National Theatres, 9, 13–18, 21, 34–5; Germany, 13; repertory, 17–18 National Mission for Children’s Theatre (Sweden), 164, 170 National Opera of Finland, 100, 103, 109 and state funding, 103–4 National Romanticism, 15 National Stages (Scènes Nationales), 154 National Theatre of Great Britain, 4, 219, 222 and campaign for, 183 and civic responsibility, 181, 185–6 and establishment of, 180, 183 and Henry V, 181 and Jerry Springer – The Opera, 181

254

Index

National Theatre of Great Britain (Contd.) and late establishment of, 28 and Playing with Fire, 229–30 and political controversy, 182 and public issues, 229–30 and ‘Royal’ designation 182, 186 n7 and Stuff Happens, 182 National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), 56, 59, 184, 234 and democratic impulse, 235 as enabling agency, 185 and European democracy, 236 and potential socio-political role, 235–6 and Scottish nationalism, 236 and touring theatre, 184–5 and vision for, 236 National Theatres as anachronistic term, 220, 227 and challenges facing, 1, 4–5, 94 and changing theatrical environment, 225–6 and characteristics of, 138; denationalization, 55; location, 53; mid-twentieth century model, 53–4, 54–5; national actors, 50–1; national audience, 50; nineteenth-century prototype, 51–2; regional theatres, 53–4 and common image of, 21 and communication modes, 56–9 and competition to, 46, 217–18, 222 and continued relevance, 188 and decentralization of, 28–9, 53–4 and division in European, 231 and divorce from emancipation project, 217 and European citizenship, 227 and European identity, 231–2, 234 and evolution of, 1 and exercise of power, 232 and financial pressures, 222 and functions of, 1 and ’fuzziness’ of concept, 51 and globalization, 228, 232 and international identity, 234 and legal status, 220 and limits of, 46 and location of, 47, 53

and minority peoples, 55–6 and national identity, 1–2, 13–14, 202, 228, 229, 231, 234–5 and nationalism, 13–19, 34–5, 236 and nation formation, 217 and organizational models: open stage, 224; production house, 225; thematic programming, 224 and origins of: Central and Eastern Europe, 22–3; Germany, 11–13, 35–7, 41–2; Imperial theatres, 10–11; influence of nationalism, 13–19; motives for establishing, 27–8; origins of concept, 21–2; pre-Enlightenment, 35; unique circumstances of, 9–10 and political ideology, 56 as precursors of nation-state, 34–5, 39 and quality of, 218 and regional theatres, 29 as repertory companies, 220–2; weakening of notion of, 222–3 and role of, 2, 228 and social control, 197 and status of, 2 and world-wide spread of, 24–8; Africa, 25–6; Arab world, 26–7; as image projection, 27–8 Nationaltheatret, 85 and architecture, 86 and celebrating nationhood, 94 and cultural status, 92 and Danish/German influences, 90 and Dano-Norwegian, 89 and foundation of, 86 and Ibsen, 92, 93, 94–5; Ibsen Festival, 86–7; significance of, 96 and international profile, 86–7 and location of, 92 as male enterprise, 91 as model of National Theatre, 86 and opening night, 93–4 and origins of, 90–1, 92 and theatrical nationhood, 85 and tradition/innovation balance, 86, 92, 94–5, 96 and women, 91–2 nation-state and communication modes, 49, 50 and construction of, 37

Index and cultural identity, 234 and cultural nationalism, 14 and erosion of, 201–2, 205 and fragmentation of, 59 and globalization, 232–4 and media: globalization, 58–9; mass media, 58–9; niche marketing, 59; print culture, 49, 57–8 and mutability of, 38 and National Theatre, 2, 39, 40, 44, 49–50; separation from, 56 naturalization and national belonging, 38 and national identity, 229 and theatrical nationhood, 37–8 and transnational character of national theatre, 35 Nazi Germany, and mass rallies, 54 Needcompany, 230 Neilson, Anthony, 185 Nekrošius, Eimuntas, 206, 210, 211, 213, 221 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir and complains about government interference, 125 and double-talk under Soviet system, 131–2 and dramatization of Anna Karenina, 129 and forced out of leadership role, 128 and Moscow Art Theatre, 120, 121 and Moscow Art Theatre repertoire, 123 and praises Stalin, 131 on Soviet censorship, 122–3 Netherlands, 35, 218 Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), 203 n23 niche marketing, and new media, 59 Nicoll, Ruaridh, 238 n18 Nigeria, 45 Norbottensteatern, 29 Norén, Lars, 108, 169 Norske Teater, 89 Norske Teater (Bergen), 90 Norway and cultural centrality of theatre, 96–7 and Den Nationale Scene, 9, 90; cultural nationalism, 15; establishment of, 16, 23; linguistic identity, 17

255

and Det Norske Teatret, 85, 97; Nynorsk, 89 and language, 87–8, 97; Nynorsk, 88–9 and national identity, 87; language, 87–9, 97; role of theatre, 97 and nationalism of, 95–6 and National Theatres, 85; origins of, 90–1, 92; tripartite structure, 85, 96 and political independence, 87 and regional theatres, 29, 54, 97 and structure of state-supported theatre, 97 see also Nationaltheatret novels, and cultural nationalism, 15 Nunn, Trevor, 182 Odéon, 29, 158–9 Odéon-Théâtre de France, 155, 158 and ambiguous position of, 156 Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, 153, 158–9 Olivier, Laurence, 180, 182–3 open stage, 224 Opéra, 29 Ostrovsky, Alexander, 67, 70 O’Toole, Fintan, 228 Out of Joint theatre company, 181 Palacký, František, 16 Palme, Olof, 167 Pan-African National Theatre, 45 Parulskis, Sigitas, 211 Pasqual, Lluis, 159 Pasternak, Boris, 123 Pavolini, Alessandro, 144 Pavolini, Corrado, and National Theatre proposals, 141–2 performance, and national identity, 228–9 Perry, Clive, 184 Peters, Julie Stone, 57 Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 63–4, 66 Petõfi, Sándor, 15 Petrovsky Theatre, 67 photography, and influence of, 56, 58 Piccolo Teatro, 31, 32, 45, 146, 147 Pieni Suomi (’Small Finland’), 100, 109 Pinero, Arthur Wing, 183 Pirandello, Luigi, 138 and National Theatre proposals, 141 Piscator, Erwin, 43

256

Index

Planchon, Roger, 41, 156–7 Plavilshikov, Petr, 65 poetry, and cultural nationalism, 15 Pogodin, Nikolay, 129 Poland, 219 and regional theatres, 54 Polish Comedy Theatre, 22, 38 Polish National Theatre, 9–10 and national independence, 22 Ponte di Pino, Oliviero, 147 Popov, Aleksandr, 124 Portugal, and National Theatre, 23 postcolonialism, 44–5 post-dramatic theatre, 225 Pottécher, Maurice, 40 Prešeren, France, 15 print culture and National Theatre, 57–8 and nation-state, 49, 57–8 Prodi, Romano, 31 production house, 225 propaganda and mass spectacles, 54 and Soviet theatre, 125–6, 128–9 prototype theory, 50 Purser, Sara, 73 Pushkin Academic Drama Theatre, 71 see Alexandrinsky Theatre Pushkin, Alexander, 15, 65 Putin, Vladimir, 70 Quebec, 46 Queen’s Men, 35 Reason, Matthew, 237 n13 Rees, Catherine, 233–4 regional theatres and Balkans, 54 and Finland, 29, 54 and France, 56, 153–4 and minority peoples, 55–6 and National Theatre, 29, 53, 54 and Norway, 29, 54, 97 and Poland, 54 and Scandinavia, 29, 54 and Soviet Union, 54 and Sweden, 29, 54, 167–8 and Yugoslavia, 54 Reinhardt, Max, 32, 43, 176, 177 Reith, Lord, 180

Renan, Ernst, 34, 37, 38–9 repertoire and nationalism, 17–18, 34 and National Theatres, 30–1 and weakening of repertory notion, 222–3 repertory companies, 220–2 and weakening of repertory notion, 222–3 Rétoré, Guy, 160 Reza, Yasmina, 223 Rihter, Andreja, 199 Riksteatern (Swedish National Touring Theatre), 54, 164, 166, 219 and artistic quality, 169 and future survival of, 170 and political threats to, 168 and regional theatres, 167–8 and Riks drama, 169 and specialized ensembles, 168–9 Ringdal, Nils Johan, 93, 94 Rolland, Romain, 36, 40–1 Romania, and National Theatre, 23 Romanticism, 15, 21 Rossi, Carlo, 66 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 14, 21, 36, 39 Royal Court Theatre, 184, 185 Royal Dramaten, see Royal Dramatic Theatre (Stockholm) Royal Dramatic Theatre (Stockholm), 1, 9, 22, 53, 54, 164, 165, 219 Royal National Theatre (Berlin), 42–3 Royal Opera (Sweden), 164, 165 Royal Shakespeare Company, 183, 219, 222 Royal Theatre (Copenhagen), 9, 10, 22, 35, 90 Rueda, Lope de, 35 Rumšas, Vytautas, 213 Rumsfeld, Donald, 182 Russell, George, 77 Russian theatre and Administration of the Imperial Theatres, 64, 67 and imperial identity, 63 and imperial/national tensions, 63–5; court entertainment/public theatre, 63–4; interpretations of plays, 69; post-Soviet era, 70–1

Index and imperial theatre, 64–5; Alexandrinsky Theatre, 66–7 and national identity, 63, 65; Maly Theatre, 68; post-Soviet era, 69, 70–1 and post-Soviet era, 69–71; cultural crisis, 70; re-evaluation of National Theatre concept, 69–70 see also Alexandrinsky Theatre; Maly Theatre; Moscow Art Theatre; Soviet Union Saint-Denis, Michael, 115, 160 Salmond, Alex, 235 Sami National Theatre, 164 Savary, Jérôme, 157 Scandinavia, and regional theatres, 29, 54 Schaubühne, 44 Schepkin, Mikhail, 69 Schiller, Friedrich, 13, 39, 173, 178 and Die Räuber, 42 and nation construction, 15, 36–7 Schimmelpfenning, Ronald, 108 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 42 Schlegel, August, 11 on Lessing’s influence, 12 Schlegel, J E, and purpose of theatre, 10–11 Schnapp, Jeffrey, 140, 144, 145 Schouwburg (Netherlands), 35 Schreyvogel, Joseph, 12 Schütze, Johann, 12 Scotland, and devolution, 235 see also National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) Scottish National Party (SNP), 235 Scottish National Players, 184 Scullion, Adrienne, 235–6 Senegal, and National Theatre, 25–6 Senelick, Laurence, 64 Senghor, Léopold, 25 Serbian National Theatre, 23 Shaffer, Peter, 133 Shaw, George Bernard, 81, 183, 184 Shchepkin, Mikhail, 120 Shuiblaigh, Maire Nic, 73, 79 Siam, and National Theatre, 24 Sibelius, Jean, 15 Simon, Barney, 44

257

Simons, Johan, 225 Sinding, Stephan, 93 Singer, I B, 133 Sinn Fein, 77 Skram, Amalie, 91 Slater, Eamonn, 233 Slovenian National Theatre, 23, 199, 200 Słowacki, Julius, 15, 209 Small Finland (Pieni Suomi), 100, 109 Smetana, Bedˇrich, 15 Smetona, Antanas, 205 socialist realism, 129–30, 132 Soloviova, Inna, 123 Soreno, Daniel, 25–6 South Africa, and Market Theatre, 44 Soviet Union and campaign against ’formalism’, 128 and censorship, 122–3, 124 and control of theatre, 122, 123, 124, 127 and double-talk under Soviet system, 131–2 and mass spectacles, 54 and nationalization of theatres, 122 and regional theatres, 54 and socialist realism, 129–30, 132 see also Maly Theatre; Moscow Art Theatre; Russian theatre Sovremennik Theatre, 132, 133 Spain, 219 and decentralization of National Theatre, 55 and establishment of National Theatre, 28, 30–1 and origins of National Theatre, 35 and Teatre Nacional de Cataluny, 30, 55, 219; and repertoire, 30–1 Spasov, K, 191 Staatstheater, 43 Stafford-Clark, Max, 181 Stahl, Gerd, 96 Stalin, Jozef, and Moscow Art Theatre, 125, 126–7, 129–30 Stanislavsky, Konstantin and appeals to Stalin, 125 and censorship of, 132 and Moscow Art Theatre, 120, 121; forced out of leadership of, 128 and socialist realism, 129 and withdrawal of, 123–4

258

Index

Stanislaw Augustus, King of Poland, 22 Steele, Richard, 58 Stefanov, Vassil, 189, 190, 191, 192 Stein, Peter, 174 Stoev, G, 191 St Petersburg, 63, 66, 70 Strasbourg, 31 Strehler, Giorgio, 31, 32, 45, 146, 159 Suárez, Adolfo, 28, 30 Sumarokov, Alexander, 65 Suomen Kansallisooppera, see National Opera of Finland Suomen Kansallisteatteri, see Finland’s National Theatre Suomen Työväenteatteri, see Finland’s Workers’ Theatre Svenska Teatern i Helsingfors, see Swedish Theatre (Finland) Sweden and decentralization of National Theatre, 164 and national identity, 170–1 and National Mission for Children’s Theatre, 164, 170 and National Theatre, 35, 164; motives for establishing, 171; role of, 171 and regional theatres, 29, 54, 167–8 and Riksteatern (Swedish National Touring Theatre), 54, 164, 166, 219; artistic quality, 169; future survival of, 170; political threats to, 168; regional theatres, 167–8; Riks drama, 169; specialized ensembles, 168–9 and Royal Dramatic Theatre, 1, 22, 53, 54, 165, 219; foundation of, 9, 164 and Royal Opera, 164, 165 and Sami National Theatre, 164 see also Royal Dramatic Theatre (Stockholm) Swedish National Touring Theatre, see Riksteatern Swedish Theatre (Finland), 100, 102 and becomes a second National Theatre, 102–3 and contemporary significance of, 109 and language, 100 and linguistic identity, 102, 104–5

and state funding, 103, 104 Synge, J M, 18, 75, 77, 80 and In the Shadow of the Glen, 77–8 Syria, and National Theatre, 26 Tabakov, Oleg, 134 Tampereen Työväen Teatteri, see Tampere Workers’ Theatre Tampere Workers’ Theatre, 100, 104 Tarasova, Alla, 129 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 15 Teatre Nacional de Cataluny (TNC), 30, 55, 219 and repertoire, 30–1 Teatro d’Arte, 138 Teatro di Roma, 31–2, 146, 147 Teatro Valle (Rome), 32, 146–7 television, and Great Britain, 180 Théâtre Civique, 40, 41 Théâtre de la Monnaie, 112–13 Théâtre de la Nation, 10, 22, 40 see also Comédie-Française Théâtre de la République, 40 Théâtre de l’Est Parisien (TEP), 160–1 Théâtre du Parc, 113 Théâtre du Soleil, 154 Théâtre National de Chaillot, 29, 153, 157–8 Théâtre National de la Colline, 29, 153, 160–1 Théâtre National de Strasbourg, 29, 31, 55, 153, 159–60 Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), 25, 41, 43, 53, 154 and effective disappearance of, 156–7 and loss of direction, 156 Theatre of Ireland, 80 Théâtre Populaire, 40 Theatre Workshop, 45 theatrical nationhood, 36, 85, 139, 229 and assembly, 39 and naturalization, 37–8 thematic programming, 224 Thespian Car troupes, ‘carri di tespi’ (Italy), 54, 142–3 Thingspiel movement, 54 Thom, Françoise, 207 Tieck, Ludwig, 14 Titz, Eduard, 43 Todorova, Maria, 197

Index Tolstoy, Aleksey, 128 Topelius, Zacharias, 17 Tosheva, Kristina, 194 Total theatre, 144 touring costs, 222 Tovstonogov, Georgy, 132 transnationalism, and limits of national theatre, 46 transnational theatre, 32 and challenges to, 45–6 and national theatre, 35; naturalization of, 35 and postwar theatre, 44–5; Germany, 44 Treadwell, Sophie, 123 Trezzini, Domenico, 66 Tricycle Theatre, 181 Trotsky, Leon, 123 Tuminas, Rimas, 210, 211, 213 Tunisia, and National Theatre, 26–7 Turkey, and National Theatre, 24 Tynan, Kenneth, 182 Undset, Sigrid, 95 Union of European Theatres, 31, 32, 33, 105, 159 United States, 41 Uvarov, Sergei, 65, 66 Vaitkus, Jonas, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212 Vandov, Nikola, 190, 191, 193, 195 Van Hecke, Englebert-Théophile, 112 Variety Theatre (Warsaw), 22 Varnas, Gintaras, 211 Vazov, Ivan, 194 Veˇcerskis, Adolfas, 213 Vedrenne, J H, 81, 184 Vega, Lope de, 35 Veltroni, Walter, 31 Verdi, Giuseppe, 15

259

Verdone, Mario, 145 Vesaas, Tarjei, 95 Viharova, V, 191 Vilar, Jean, 25, 41, 115, 155, 156, 157, 219 Vinaver, Michel, 161 Vincent, Jean-Pierre, 161 Virta, Nikolay, 130 Vitez, Antoine, 157, 161 Volkov, Fyodor, 64 Volksbühne, 25, 32–3, 43 Wagner, Richard, 15, 16, 17–18 Wareing, Alfred, 184 Weigel, Helene, 43 Weimar Republic, 43 Widdis, Emma, 63 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 13 Williams, Tennessee, 133 Wilmer, Steve, 38, 100, 138 Wilms, Berndt, 43 Wilson, Robert, 30 Wuolijoki, Hella, 107 Yeats, John Butler, 73 Yeats, W B, 15 and Abbey Theatre, 23–4, 74–5, 79, 82, 184; ambitions for, 80–1 and On Baile’s Strand, 76–7 and Irish nationalism, 18; break with radical nationalism, 76; relations with, 77–8 Yiddish, 27, 38 Yugoslavia, and regional theatres, 54 see also Balkans Zadek, Peter, 174 Zionism, 27 Žižek, Slavoj, 201–2 Zorin, Leonid, 132