In this Book
- That Third Guy: A Comedy from the Stalinist 1930s with Essays on Theater
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
This collection of theater writings by the Russian modernist Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky brings his powerful, wildly imaginative vision of theater to an English-language audience for the first time. The centerpiece is his play That Third Guy (1937), a farce written at the onset of the Stalinist Terror and never performed. Its plot builds on Alexander Pushkin's poem "Cleopatra," while parodying the themes of Eros and empire in the Cleopatra tales of two writers Krzhizhanovsky adored: Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. In a chilling echo of the Soviet 1930s, Rome here is a police state, and the Third Guy (a very bad poet) finds himself in its dragnet. As he scrambles to escape his fate, the end of the Roman Republic thunders on offstage.
The volume also features selections from Krzhizhanovsky's compelling and idiosyncratic essays on Shakespeare, Pushkin, Shaw, and the philosophy of theater. Professionally, he worked with director Alexander Tairov at the Moscow Kamerny Theater, and his original philosophy of the stage bears comparison with the great theater theorists of the twentieth century. In these writings, he reflects on the space and time of the theater, the resonance of language onstage, the experience of the actor, and the relationship between the theater and the everyday. Commentary by Alisa Ballard Lin and Caryl Emerson contextualizes Krzhizhanovsky's writings.
The volume also features selections from Krzhizhanovsky's compelling and idiosyncratic essays on Shakespeare, Pushkin, Shaw, and the philosophy of theater. Professionally, he worked with director Alexander Tairov at the Moscow Kamerny Theater, and his original philosophy of the stage bears comparison with the great theater theorists of the twentieth century. In these writings, he reflects on the space and time of the theater, the resonance of language onstage, the experience of the actor, and the relationship between the theater and the everyday. Commentary by Alisa Ballard Lin and Caryl Emerson contextualizes Krzhizhanovsky's writings.
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-iv
- Illustrations
- pp. vii-viii
- Biographical Note
- pp. xix-xx
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xxi-2
- Part I: Krzhizhanovsky on Theater
- A Philosopheme for the Theater
- pp. 17-57
- Articles for 7 Days of the MKT
- pp. 58-70
- The Stage Direction (A Fragment)
- pp. 71-74
- Part II: That Third Guy
- That Third Guy
- pp. 77-134
- Thirdness in theTheaters of Art and Life
- pp. 135-148
- Part III: Krzhizhanovsky on Shaw and Shakespeare
- The Dramatic Devices of Bernard Shaw
- pp. 151-160
- Shakespeare’s Comediography
- pp. 161-235
- The Poetics of Shakespeare’s Chronicles
- pp. 236-241
- Imagined Shakespeare
- pp. 242-247
- Fragments on Shakespeare
- pp. 248-252
- Part IV. Krzhizhanovsky on Pushkin
- The Art of the Epigraph (Pushkin)
- pp. 255-258
- Stanza by Stanza through Onegin
- pp. 259-261
- The Story of One Manuscript (Boris Godunov)
- pp. 262-268
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299317133
Related ISBN(s)
9780299317102
MARC Record
OCLC
1040694763
Pages
325
Launched on MUSE
2018-06-24
Language
English
Open Access
No