Books

Blok wrote the play The Fairground Booth in 1906 in the wake of the 1905 revolution which was seen as a precuser to the 1917 october revolution. As Blok himself said it seemed he “dragged it up out of the police department of his soul”. The play itself was received with a mixture of derision and delight when it was first perfromed by Blok and Meyerhold in 1906.
Blok and Meyerhold’s production of the The Fairground Booth was one of those seminal plays which changed the whole direction and context of theatre in Russia. Meyerhold’s subsequent innovations had an impact not simply on the course of Russian theatre but also to a large extent influenced the direction in which other directors developed their ideas and work. The Fairground Booth was a prototype for the explosion of theatrical innovations spearheaded by Meyerhold but it also inspired such directors as Tairov and Vakhtangov.
This book is not intended as an interpretation of the play as such but is written with the aim of creating a context in which this enigmatic and often overlooked play can be understood and enjoyed.

The Russian Theatre Film Series is an account of this arts documentary series with all its pitfalls, successes, limitations and achievements. The three films which have so far been completed are “Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde”, “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” and “Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre”. This book is part of the overall project – The Russian Theatre Film Series and is a milestone and a marker in this developing project. It is also a commentary on what it means to make an independent arts documentary film series in a foreign country namely Russia. Not so much from the technical point of view although there is plenty of technical aspects covered but more from the point of view of a kind of interior process. It is an expedition into the phenomenology of film-making, what obstacles have to be overcome, both physical and technically but more importantly some of the lived experience of film-making. For some people making independent films is a way of life in the same way that for others theatre is a way of life or acting is a way of life or painting or whatever is a way of life. You can’t live without it or outside it. The fact that you have to spend a year or two of your life on each film means that it is a life decision. So it has an existential element and this quality of film-making is explored in the book. How the series came about, what were the thought processes involved in the development of the series, which influenced the series overall – who helped who didn’t, why things went wrong and why they went right. The book is a staging post on the way to further developments clearing the ground before moving forward to the next phase – a book about The Fairground Booth plus a film on this subject.

Encounters with the Russian Avant-garde complements the series of six films made by Michael Craig and Copernicus Films about the Russian Avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s. It is not only an account or explanation but also an introduction or to be more specific an “encounter” with this exciting phenomenon. The title reflects an active relationship: firstly through the experience of living in Moscow for many years, plus a direct encounter with the buildings, the architecture and the very territory in which much of the avant-garde arose and to some extent still exists. Encounter suggests something more casual, unexpected and unstructured but also a sense of living in the avant-garde and being part of it. After all it was the intention of the Russian Avant-garde to connect with the real lived world and to ‘take art out of the galleries and onto the streets and squares of Moscow’.