Description:

Please join the Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies Research Program for a lecture-dialogue, featuring guest scholars Maria Shevtsova (Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London) and Stefan Aquilina (Director of the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta) and moderated by Dassia N. Posner (Associate Professor of Theatre, Northwestern University). Both speakers will discuss their innovative new books, after which Posner will moderate a conversation about the broader relevance of Russian theatre scholarship today. 

Lectures:

Maria Shevtsova, “Why Rediscovering Stanislavsky Matters”

As Shevtsova’s book Rediscovering Stanislavsky reveals, Konstantin Stanislavsky’s pioneering achievements, for too long complacently misunderstood, call for rediscovery in a COVID-devastated world for their innovative and enduring power. They foreground artistic ethics and the ethics of social and political actions and behaviours; interdisciplinary vectors, involving the visual arts, music, and dance as well as political, historical, ethnographic and religious thought; individuated yet collaborative energies and creativities; principles of ensemble theatre; the development of actors as the development of human beings; co-authorship with directors; co-authorship of spectators; the establishment of theatre and opera laboratories – these generally unacknowledged models for the radical (‘experimental’) groups of the 1960s through to 2021.  

Stefan Aquilina, “Researching Modern Theatre in Russia: Contemporary Perspectives”

Aquilina’s book, Modern Theatre in Russia, challenges conventional historiographical approaches by weaving contemporary theories on cultural transmission into its historical narrative, arguing that processes of transmission – training spaces, acting manuals, photographic evidence, newspaper reports, international networking, informal encounters, cultural memories – contribute to the formation and consolidation of theatre traditions. Through English translations of rare Russian sources, Aquilina’s book discusses side-lined material on modern theatre in Russia, including Stanislavsky’s rehearsal practices for Artists and Admirers; proletarian theatre as an amateur-professional combination and force in the transformation of everyday life; Meyerhold’s international persona as depicted in newspapers published in the West; and Asja Lācis and the gender imbalance that is often characteristic of modernism.

Maria Shevtsova is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London. Shevtsova’s many books include Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004), Fifty Key Theatre Directors (2005, co-ed), Jean Genet: Performance and Politics (2006, co-ed), Robert Wilson (2007, 2019), Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre (2009, co-authored), Sociology of Theatre and Performance (2009), Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013, co-authored) and Rediscovering Stanislavsky (2020). She is the Editor of New Theatre Quarterly and part of the editorial team of Critical Stages and Stanislavsky Studies. She is on the Board of the Stanislavsky Research Centre. 

Stefan Aquilina is Director of the School of Performing Arts of the University of Malta and Co-Director of the Stanislavsky Research Centre. His research focuses on modern theatre, especially Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, but has wider interest in the transmission of embodied practice, amateur theatre, devised performance, and reflective teaching. Aquilina’s publications include Modern Theatre in Russia: Tradition Building and Transmission (2020), Amateur and Proletarian Theatre in Post-Revolutionary Russia: Primary Sources (forthcoming 2021), Stanislavsky in the World (with Prof. Jonathan Pitches, 2017), and Interdisciplinarity in the Performing Arts (with Malaika Sarco-Thomas, 2018). 

Dassia N. Posner is Associate Professor of Theatre and Slavic at Northwestern University. Her books include The Director’s Prism: E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde (2016), The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (with Claudia Orenstein and John Bell, 2014), and Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev (with Kevin Bartig and Maria De Simone, forthcoming 2021).