Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891–1933 by Valleri J. Hohman (review)

For most of the twentieth century, actors and dancers in the United States have considered Russian training in the performing arts the gold standard. At the Actors Studio in New York City, home of the Method, Lee Strasberg liberally quoted from Stanislavski’s teaching and adapted his Russian techniques to American culture. On the top floor of Carnegie Hall, Aleksandra Danilova, formerly of the Ballets Russes, taught ballet while young dancers from other teachers’ classes would gather at the doors and greedily watch. Even popular culture treated Russian training and performance as the best available. In the film Outrageous Fortune (dir. Arthur Hiller, 1987) two would-be actresses compete for places in an acting workshop, run by a demanding Eastern bloc teacher whose name sounds suspiciously like “Stanislavski.” Similarly exacting is Lucille Ball’s Russian dance teacher in Dance Girl Dance (dir. Dorothy Arzner and Robert Wise, 1940), played by actress Maria Ouspenskaya, who had begun her career in Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre. In Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, Valleri J. Hohman explores the genesis of this widespread perception by “chart[ing] the development of America’s interest in the performing arts from the Russian Empire” (2).

Hohman has uncovered archival information about touring artists from Russia, Russians who emigrated to the United States and brought their art with them, and the producers and writers who promoted their work. She chooses to focus on the years between 1891 and 1933 because Russian modernism was especially vibrant and influential in that period. Her book begins with the large in-flux of Jews who fled from pogroms in Russia, settled in New York’s lower east side, and founded a flourishing Yiddish theatrical culture there. She ends just as Stalin was about to impose Socialist Realism on all Soviet artists, thus effectively killing off artistic experimentation for the next few decades.

Hohman’s book includes a broad range of historical figures. She focuses on artists who were highly influential but are less often examined by scholars than the larger-than-life figures like Stanislavski. Among those she treats in depth are the playwright Jacob Gordin, who collaborated with the famed Yiddish actor and theatre manager Jacob Adler; the actress Alla Nazimova, who eventually settled in Hollywood; Nikita Balieff and his cabaret the Chauve-Souris; a number of ballet dancers including Michel Fokine, Mikhail Mordkine, and Adolf Bolm; Nahum Zemach of the Habima Theatre, which performed in Hebrew; and the proletarian artists of Artef, the first workers’ theatre to appear on Broadway.

Even more significant are her portraits of those who hailed Russia’s performing arts in the United States as hallmarks of great value. Hohman profiles in depth the conservative banker Otto Kahn and the impresario Morris Gest, himself Russian and a sometimes con artist. These two men financed tour after tour, bringing major ballet dancers and the Moscow Art Theatre to the United States for the first time. In these sections of the book, Hohman explores “the com-modification of Russian performance” (58), a topic of great importance but one usually overlooked by scholars who treat artistry alone. Journalists and writers like Oliver Sayler, Huntley Carter, and Hallie Flannagan also prominently figure into Hohman’s story. Their descriptions of Russian performances they had seen and admired in Europe prepared the American spectators to receive Russian experimentation on home ground more enthusiastically than they might have otherwise.

The book organizes this vast amount of material chronologically in three multisectioned parts. Because some sections focus on playwriting and theatre design, some on business and publicity, and others on specific performances, reading Hohman’s book is an interesting and varied experience. At the same time, the parts do not always build neatly upon one another. Part 1 works as a short book on Yiddish theatre, part 2 as a separate exploration of the financial machinations behind the tours of Russian performing artists to the United States, and...