Mobilising Maurya: J. M. Synge, Bertolt Brecht and the Revolutionary Mother

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Cannon Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Epic Theater ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Special Case

This chapter examines the impact on modern drama of the establishment of the Soviet Union, through in-depth investigation of a special case: Bertolt Brecht’s transformation of J. M. Synge’s 1904 Riders to the Sea into a 1937 Spanish Civil War play called Señora Carrar’s Rifles. Synge and Ireland were not, for their own sakes, important to Brecht; he was drawn to Riders as a model which might help him solve the problem of how to radicalise the working-class mother. After the disastrous 1935 production of Brecht’s The Mother by the New York City-based Theatre Union, Brecht concluded that the technical demands of epic theater were beyond the capacity of these amateur ensembles. Synge’s unusual treatment of maternal grief in Riders helped Brecht envision a means of producing the effects of epic theater while using the techniques of realism. Helene Weigel’s performance as Teresa Carrar was crucial to his later thinking about acting and spectator emotion. Re-presenting Maurya’s refusal to grieve for Bartley in both Senora Carrar’s Rifles and Mother Courage helped Brecht refine his understanding of alienation in ways which made epic theater more pleasurable for spectators without requiring Brecht to acknowledge that pleasure as a desired effect.

scholarly journals Tracing the Scholarly Legacy of I.M. Pul’ner: A Detour through the Pages of Sovetish Heymland

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-147
Author(s):  
Deborah Yalen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
York City ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Document ◽  
State Museum ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

This article explores the scholarly legacy of I.M. Pul’ner, director of the Jewish Section of the State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad from the late 1930s until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and considers the significance of material culture for Soviet Jewish ethnography during the interwar period. It also traces the rediscovery of Pul’ner by Soviet Jewish intellectuals in the 1970s, and the global journey of a long-lost archival document, which is now preserved at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

“Ballet Is a Flower”

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-128
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
York City ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
The Soviet Union

Chapter 4 analyzes New York City Ballet’s (NYCB’s) 1962 tour of the Soviet Union and the Soviet reception of NYCB choreographer George Balanchine. Previous scholarly accounts have claimed the Soviet reviews of Balanchine’s works were heavily censored, and that, as a result, the tour undermined the authority of the Soviet government with the intelligentsia. Chapter 4 re-examines this tour, using transliteration as a way of modeling the Soviet response to Balanchine. This re-examination shows that Soviet cultural authorities were not at all hostile to the choreographer or his company. The Soviet critics mostly accepted Balanchine’s ballets, but they reframed his accomplishments within their own debates about drambalet and choreographic symphonism. According to Balanchine’s Soviet critics, his works were successful precisely because they reaffirmed the value of the Russian systems of training, artistry, and meaning.

CHILDHOOD AND EXILE. THE EXPERIENCES OF CHILDREN OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN THE SOVIET UNION AND MEXICO INFANCIA Y EXILIO

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-194
Author(s):  
Magdalena Garrido Caballero ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Condi Tions ◽  
Children Of War ◽  
The Impact

The study focuses on the Spanish "children of war" who were evacuated to Mexico and the USSR during the Spanish Civil War between 1937 and 1938, and their experiences described in various sources. These are both memories and scholarly research, incorporating information col-lected through various research projects to study the perception of exiles of their experience. No less significant for this work is the material re-lated to the influence of the "children of war" on the societies that host them; this perspective is of particular relevance at the present stage. Both the USSR and Mexico supported the Second Republic both in the international arena and in the humanitarian direction. At the same time, the USSR accepted more children than Mexico and the living condi-tions of the exiles varied significantly. Life stories testify to the trau-mas associated with separation from families, both when moving to Mexico and the USSR, the difficulties of returning and reuniting with their relatives, the impact on the fate of Spanish children of the break that occurred in Spain after the defeat of the Republicans and the estab-lishment of the Francoist dictatorship.

Strategic Monuments: Zurab Tsereteli’s Gift Sculptures to the United States in the Eras of Détente, Perestroika, and Anti-Terrorism, 1979-2006

Experiment ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 264-296
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Woodburn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
The Look

Abstract Best known for transforming the look of Moscow in the 1990s, sculptor and artist Zurab Tsereteli has also donated gift monuments abroad to coincide with diplomatic initiatives of the Soviet Union and Russia. This article examines Tsereteli’s gift monuments to the United States, spanning from the era of détente in the late-1970s to the brief window of anti-terrorist solidarity after 11 September 2001. The monuments are located mostly in or near New York City, although the unfortunate Columbus monument still awaits a permanent home (contrary to rumor, however, it did not return to Moscow as Peter the Great). While the motives and intentions informing the gifts provide the initial footing for the reception of the works, they fade to obscurity as the monuments accrue a legacy within the host community over time.

Some Observations on the Current Status of the Tate Letter

1960 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 790-800
Author(s):  
Leo M. Drachsler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Main Action ◽  
Specific Implementation ◽  
Turn Over

Opportunity to drive a significant salient, spearheaded by a specific implementation of the Tate Letter into the stubbornly resisting domain of sovereign immunity, was presented recently to both the State Department and the New York Supreme Court in Weilamann and McCloskey (Sheriff of City of New York) v. The Chase Manhattan Bank. Bank accounts of the State Bank and the Bank for Foreign Trade of the U.S.S.R., maintained in the Chase Manhattan Bank, had been attached by the New York City Sheriff in an action by Mrs. Weilamann, owner of Soviet state bonds in default. The party defendant, the Soviet Union, though served with process, did not appear in the main action, or directly enter a plea of immunity. In a further action in aid of the warrant of attachment, for a judgment directing the Chase Manhattan to turn over the moneys in these accounts to the Sheriff, pursuant to the warrant (the bank having refused to turn over the moneys to the Sheriff on the ground that it was not indebted to the U.S.S.R., but did owe balances to the two Soviet banks), the complaint was dismissed on the ground that the State Department's letter of interest suggesting immunity of the U.S.S.R. from attachment must be honored.

JOHN CAGE IN SOVIET RUSSIA

Tempo ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (266) ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Alexander Ivashkin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
York City ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
John Cage ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
League Of Composers

AbstractJohn Cage's music was little known in the Soviet Union until the late 1960s, as official communist cultural policy would not allow his music to be performed or researched. This makes it all the more surprising that the only visit by the composer to Soviet Russia had become possible by 1988. The Soviet officials were planning a large festival of contemporary music in St Petersburg in 1988. With the changing climate Tikhon Khrennikov, the secretary of the All Soviet Union League of Composers, appointed by Stalin in 1948, was keen to be seen as a progressive at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, and he approved the invitation for Cage to be present at the performances of his works in St Petersburg. This article includes interviews with the composer conducted by the author in 1987–1989, as well as recollections of the meetings with Cage at his home in New York City and in Moscow.

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