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Introductory Note, revisited
What follows are my responses to questions posed to me by Kiril
Bolotnikov, the
most faithful
tracker of my
involvement with
Kandinsky's
artistic life
outside of
painting.
Bolotnikov had
heard a brief
lecture I gave in
the important
"Globus Arts
Lectures"
series hosted by
Zarina Zabrisky: it
included my
overview of
Kandinsky's
multi-layered
theatre work, and
the first-ever
known live reading
of his body of
poetry, including
several poems in
English for the
first time. That
recorded event
appears in the Special
Index for my "Kandinsky Anew" series, where you can see it—it follows the March 2021 entry—for context before or while reading below.
That event ended
with a Question
& Answer
period, which
Bolotnikov's
engaged and cogent
questions here
extend. He posed
five questions; I
answered Questions 1&2 last month, so the one here is Question 3, and the others follow. Ground rules: I had to answer conversationally (not in academic-ese), without using any reference materials! I imagine many other readers will be glad that Bolotnikov came forward to draw out more on what they've wondered about Kandinsky, a theatre and poetry innovator.
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Question 3.
Kiril
Bolotnikov: As you
say in your
introduction to the
topic, few people
are familiar with
Kandinsky's
writings about the
theatre. Are there
theatre
practitioners you
know of, either
contemporary with
him or later on,
who we do know
to have
been influenced
by or familiar with
his theater work
and/or
writings?
Lissa Tyler Renaud
: Well, we can
easily see what a
splash his theatre
work made at the
time by just two of
the impressive
people it
attracted. For
example, Hugo Ball
was an important in
the theatre in
Munich when he
planned to produce Yellow Sound.
When the start of
WWI smushed that
idea, Ball went to
Zurich and
presently started
his famous Cabaret
Voltaire, which had
a Kandinsky Room in
it and where Ball
lectured on
Kandinsky's
ideas and writings
for the theatre.
(He also read three
of K's
poems—a whole
other delicious
subject). I wish
more people
nowadays made that
connection—that
through Ball,
Kandinsky 's
experimental ideas
for the theatre
were a foundational
influence on the
larger Dada
movement—which
means all the
artists who were
part of it! That
connection would
give them a better
sense of the
original impulse
behind Dada, which
was of its time and
place, and quite
different from what
it became in other
times and
countries.
Ball's diary, Flight Out of Time,
is
fantastic—it
tells the whole
story and how
Ball's thinking
evolved and then
shifted away from
Dada. Clarifying
and moving.
Another important
figure who
recognized
Kandinsky's
importance to the
theatre was the
dancer-choreographer-painter-sculptor,
Oskar Schlemmer.
Now people know him
best for his unique
"Triadic
Ballet," and
as the brilliant
director of the
Bauhaus Theatre
Workshop. To repeat
what I've
recorded about this
elsewhere: when
Schlemmer was
leaving the
Bauhaus, it was
Kandinsky he asked
to take over the
Theatre. Schlemmer
wrote that
Kandinsky had
shaken his head
sadly, probably put
off by all the work
the Theatre
took—and had
said that Schlemmer
realized much of
what Kandinsky had
hoped to do. All
this is told
marvelously by
Schlemmer himself,
in The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer.
As you see, I'm
a great believer in
diaries! Too often
"narratives"
grow up around
someone even when
their own diaries
say exactly the
opposite—so
true in
Schlemmer's
case!
Your full
question—"or
later
on"—makes
me think about
where we can find
evidence of
Kandinsky's
theatre work in
actual
practitioners
today, directors,
actors, dancers,
and so on.
Hm. Anecdotally, I
know of someone who
uses
Kandinsky's
movement analyses
to train
choreographers: an
excellent idea! And
about twenty years
ago, I was thrilled
when he was
included in a
beautifully edited
anthology called Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890 to 1950 [added
later: by Cardullo
and Knopf]: it has
a few concise
introductory pages,
the full text of Yellow Sound,
and K's
"On Stage
Composition."
He's even
referred to there
as "Wassily
Kandinsky, painter,
playwright, and
theorist"! The
book is so
accessible that I
hope it's easy
to put on a theatre
course's book
list, and will
entice a general
readership
interested in the
theatre. We're
lucky that art
historians have
kept the facts of
his theatre work
from disappearing
over the decades
(though sometimes
they sound as if he
was a painter
dabbling in the
theatre as a kind
of hobby)—god
knows the theatre
historians
weren't
helping. But
it's the
"theatre
people" who
will benefit the
most from knowing
about K's
theatre ideas and
short
plays—and, I
argue, about the
early avant-garde
in general! In any
case, it is such a
coup that K is
included as a prime
mover, side-by-side
there with
acknowledged
theatre pioneers
such as Strindberg,
Maeterlinck, Stein
and Artaud, in a
book squarely in
the field of
theatre.
At the same time,
I've come
across more than a
few productions of
"Kandinsky's Yellow Sound,"
which are anything
but. I mean, I
can't find
anything in the
photos or
descriptions that
correspond to the
actual play text.
The participants do
something
generically
"abstract"
on stage, or start
from a few words in
the text—such
as
"light"
or "colored
tights"—and
take off in all
directions. In
these cases,
Kandinsky's
name serves as
advertising for
performances a)
unrecognizable as
his own play, and
b) without an
understanding of
his ideas. I hope
it's not too
harsh to say I
don't believe
there's ever
been a production
of Yellow Sound that was true to Kandinsky's intentions. (I hope now I'll be flooded with documentation of countless accurate productions!)
There've also
been conceptual
artists, especially
in Europe, who
aren't
pretending to
"do"
Kandinsky, but who
are genuinely
inspired by the
spirit of his
ideas, by some seed
in them, by their
essential elements,
and who have
created pieces that
are intelligent and
wonderful.
To tell the truth,
I wish Kandinsky
hadn't called
his theatre pieces
"stage
compositions."
Because
"composition"
was the private
word he used for a
certain body of his
paintings—large
in size and theme,
dense, and
especially planned
or
"composed"
as opposed to
"improvised."
His Compositions
were to him what a
symphony is to a
composer. Not that
these don't
describe Yellow Sound, or my favorite, Violet,
or to any of the
other shorter plays
he wrote—but
that it's not a
very evocative word
for someone in the
theatre—say,
a director looking
for a play to do,
or a theatre
producer looking to
shake up a
season's
program. I'm
just thinking about
it from a practical
point of view;
maybe it
doesn't bother
anyone else.
Well, there is
certainly room for
a lot to be done in
the theatre with
K's interesting
plays— there
seem to be more and
more academic
articles, and even
books, about K and
the theatre, so
there must be lots
of scholars
interested in them
all around the
world. The question
is how to get from
there to here, from
studying the
materials as viable
scripts for the
theatre, to
producing them in
theatres.
To be continued…
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