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Elena Siemens | University of Alberta<\/p>\n
High-Rise Zhivago<\/h4>\n
Riding the metro to the Meridian Culture Palace, I tried to keep an open mind. The show was staged by the Taganka\u2019s veteran director Yuri Lyubimov, who had produced many of this theatre\u2019s legendary Soviet-era productions. The journey was long, even by Moscow standards, and to make things worse I had nothing to read, making the trip even more tedious. The Meridian, which I found right next to the station, was exactly the kind of structure I imagined it to be: a giant concrete shoebox decorated with sculptural depictions of spacecrafts and cosmonauts. Directly in front of it was a large parking lot, where I photographed a girl walking a cat on a leash. A mass of residential high-rises was visible in the distance, and beyond that were more high-rises and a forest.<\/p>\n
The show began with dancing and choir singing. The enormous stage was lit by blinding spotlights. This was not a promising start. Doctor Zhivago<\/em> was prohibited in the Soviet Union, and people read it in smuggled copies. Most Russians were familiar only with the novel\u2019s selection of poems published during Khrushchev\u2019s thaw. \u201cWinter Night,\u201d describing the clandestine meeting of Lara and Strelnikov, has a haunting refrain: \u201cThe Candle on the table burned, the candle burned\u201d (Pasternak 488). This poem was made into a song which everyone sang at informal gatherings. I had hoped the show would be inspired by it as well. After the intermission, things remained the same \u2013 more group dancing, more choir singing. And more spotlights. I gathered my things and left, blaming director Yury Lyubimov, but also myself for thinking that he could overcome the environment. No one could. When staged at a place like the Meridian, Zhivago<\/em> inevitably acquires a completely different set of characteristics and becomes something other than Zhivago<\/em>. Later on, I learned that Lyubimov\u2019s choice of the Meridian was not entirely deliberate; it had resulted at least in part from a fierce internal conflict at the Taganka Theatre and a territorial war that followed it.<\/p>\n Theatre buildings and their locations, Marvin Carlson argues in Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture<\/em>, \u201cgenerate social and cultural meaning of their own which in turn help to structure the meaning of the entire theatre experience\u201d (2). Most researchers, Carlson laments, address \u201cprimarily (and often exclusively)\u201d the written text, while leaving the space of performance virtually ignored (2). To counteract this approach, Carlson refers to Roland Barthes\u2019 essay \u201cThe Eiffel Tower,\u201d among other sources, which identifies the meaning of various constituent parts, or zones, of Paris. Extending Barthes, Carlson points out that Parisian theatres \u201creflect these connotative divisions,\u201d and that the Montmartre zone, for instance, which is associated with \u201cpleasure,\u201d contains mostly cabarets and music halls (1989: 12).<\/p>\n Similar \u201cconnotative divisions\u201d can also be found in Moscow, as exemplified by the contrast between the Meridian Culture Palace and the historical Taganka Theatre. Taganka\u2019s original building was constructed in 1911 and initially housed the Volcano Cinema, one of Moscow\u2019s first movie houses. This old-fashioned building is representative of the cozy, pastel-coloured low-rises that populated Moscow before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Today the theatre is painted dark-red, and its fa\u00e7ade is decorated with various Constructivist-inspired details. The theatre\u2019s striking emblem, also displayed on the fa\u00e7ade, is reminiscent of Kazemir Malevich\u2019s iconic painting Black Square<\/em> (1913), recognized as a turning point in the history of art. Malevich received a less enthusiastic response in his native Russia during the age of Socialist Realism.<\/p>\n In the Soviet period, the Taganka staged prohibited material, such as Mikhail Bulgakov\u2019s The Master and Margarita<\/em>, that gathered large crowds and antagonized the officials in charge of the Soviet arts. Its rebellious repertoire corresponded to the theatre\u2019s location on Taganskaya Square, the former site of the infamous Taganskaya prison, founded in 1804. Following the prison\u2019s demolition in 1958, the Soviet-built Taganskaya metro station became the square\u2019s most prominent landmark. The Taganka Theatre\u2019s imposing new building, adjacent to the theatre\u2019s old stage, opened in 1980. With its arrival, the square has become a prominent theatrical destination \u2013 a transformation similar to that of Bastille Square in Paris. Once a site of the legendary Bastille prison, this square is now home to the enormous Opera Bastille.<\/p>\n The Taganka Theatre\u2019s historical building is representative of the old Moscow described in Pasternak\u2019s Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. Riding to a Christmas gathering in the chapter \u201cChristmas Party at the Sventitsky\u2019s,\u201d young Yury Zhivago admires the \u201cice-bound trees of the squares and streets\u201d and the \u201clights shining through the frosted windows\u201d (81). On Kamergersky Lane, he notices \u201cthat a candle had melted a patch in the icy crust on one of the windows\u201d (81). He whispers to himself the beginning of his yet unwritten poem \u201cWinter Night\u201d (81). Kamergersky Lane, with its old houses predating the 1917 Revolution, plays a key role in the novel.\u00a0 Both Yury Zhivago and Lara live here at different times, and it is here that both of them will die. In his room on Kamergersky, Zhivago feverishly writes his essays and poetry, addressing his beloved city. He acknowledges how \u201cempty and dilapidated\u201d Moscow has become following the \u201ctrials of the first few years of the revolution\u201d (436). \u201cBut even in this condition,\u201d he insists, \u201cit is still a large modern city and cities are the only source of inspiration for a truly modern, contemporary art\u201d (436).<\/p>\n In contrast to the Taganka Theatre, the Meridian Culture Palace is located near the remote Kaluzhskaya metro station \u2013 a residential suburb far removed from the historical centre of Moscow and populated by a mass of uniform high-rises, representative of the \u201cnew rationalist\u201d architecture that originated in the 1960s. Inspired by the 1920s motto \u201cthe form is determined by the function,\u201d the \u201cnew rationalism,\u201d Andrei Ikonnikov writes in Russian<\/em><\/p>\n Architecture of the Soviet Period<\/em>, subordinated form to \u201cbuilding technology\u201d (327). He points out that the homogeneous architecture of the 1960s divided\u00a0 buildings into \u201cfunctional types\u201d; considerations of style came second and \u201cdepended on the purpose of the structure\u201d (328). A characteristic example of these functional buildings, Ikonnikov continues, is a large cinema defined by the \u201causterely natural forms of exposed, undecorated constructions\u201d with an \u201cemphatically straightforward\u201d interior devoid of any superfluous decorations (285-86).<\/p>\n The \u201cpalaces of culture,\u201d also built according to a standard design, exhibited similar characteristics. These multifunctional entertainment structures staged concerts and theatrical productions, as well as offering space for political gatherings. The Soviet architecture of the 1970s, Ikonnikov argues, still \u201cfailed to take on a more personal touch,\u201d and the collectivism of the 1960s continued to rule (328). The homogeneity of Soviet-built suburbs received a humorous treatment in Eldar Ryazanov\u2019s hit film The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath<\/em> (1975). The film includes an animated prologue, in which Soviet authorities veto any architectural innovations, and insisting instead on populating Moscow and the rest of the Soviet Union with uniform high-rises. The suburban Cheremushki neighbourhood, located one metro stop away from the Meridian, serves as the film\u2019s Moscow location.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a few minutes from my timeworn house, and I am surrounded by the derricks of a building estate without a past,\u201d Henri Lefebvre writes in his well-known essay \u201cNotes on the New Town\u201d (148). According to Lefebvre, in the \u201cold town\u201d each house \u201chas its own particular face,\u201d and streets are \u201cspontaneous and transitory\u201d (148). The street, he explains, \u201cis not simply there so that people can get from A to B, nor does it lay traps for them with lighting effects and displays of objects\u201d (148-49). Conversely, the \u201cnew town,\u201d with its uniform high-rises, or the \u201cmachines for living in,\u201d terrifies Lefebvre (149). He acknowledges that the new \u201cblocks of flats look well planned and properly built,\u201d as well as offering various modern conveniences (149). But can these blocks of flats, Lefebvre asks, \u201cmediate between man and nature, between one man and another\u201d? (150). \u201cStreets and highways,\u201d he warns, \u201care becoming more necessary, but their incessant, unchanging, ever-repeated traffic is turning them into wastelands\u201d (151).<\/p>\n Sharing some of Lefebvre\u2019s concerns, Douglas Coupland, the author of the seminal Generations X,<\/em> writes in his book City of Glass<\/em> dedicated to his hometown of Vancouver:<\/p>\n A few years ago, I went to see a Hollywood thriller which was partly filmed in front of my father\u2019s office building in North Vancouver. In the movie, North Vancouver was \u201cBoulder, Colorado,\u201d and throughout the movie Vancouver doubled as Seattle, Denver, New Orleans and a few other cities, none of them Vancouver. (6)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Vancouver, Coupland continues, \u201ccan neatly morph into just about any other North American city save for those in the American Southwest, and possibly Miami\u201d (7). This statement also applies to Edmonton, the capital of neighbouring Alberta, where I took my photographs for this paper. Edmonton\u2019s downtown skyline, representative of a typical midsize western city, can \u201cneatly morph\u201d into a variety of towns in the American Northwest. Moreover, Edmonton\u2019s residential high-rises, located downtown and around the University of Alberta campus, resemble Moscow\u2019s suburban apartment buildings. I also photographed rows of soup cans and cases of Coca-Cola at Edmonton\u2019s chain grocery stores. With their repetitive geometrical patterns, those grocery displays reveal the same monotony to which Lefebvre objected in his discussion of the new town.<\/p>\n But the new and the uniform can also be celebrated and even revered, as demonstrated in Andy Warhol\u2019s art \u2013 an inspiration behind my photographs of Edmonton\u2019s supermarkets. \u201cMy ideal city,\u201d Warhol declares, \u201cwould be completely new. No antiques<\/em>. All the buildings would be new. Old buildings are unnatural spaces.\u00a0 Buildings should be built to last for a short time\u201d (157).<\/p>\n Warhol urges city planners to construct new buildings \u201cevery fourteen years\u201d (157). He explains : \u201cThe building and the tearing down would keep people busy, and the water wouldn\u2019t be rusty from old pipes\u201d (157). Warhol has also favoured \u201cthe good, plain American lunchroom or even the good, plain American lunch counter\u201d over fancy restaurants (159). He even hoped to start a chain of diners called Andymats<\/em>. He states: \u201cEverybody\u2019s sense of beauty is different from everybody else\u2019s\u201d (71).<\/p>\n According to Warhol, \u201cthe most beautiful thing\u201d in any city from Tokyo to Florence is a McDonald\u2019s (71). Since the 1970s, when The Philosophy of Andy Warhol<\/em> first appeared in print, Moscow has acquired numerous McDonald\u2019s restaurants, as well as western-style supermarkets offering Coca-Cola and Campbell\u2019s Soup. Along with Peking, renamed Beijing, contemporary Moscow can now be added to Warhol\u2019s list of \u201cbeautiful\u201d cities. Discussing Coca-Cola\u2019s contribution to America\u2019s democracy, Warhol writes:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What\u2019s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.\u00a0 You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drink Coke and just think, you can drink Coke, too.\u00a0 A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. (100-01)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like Warhol, the renowned early Russian avant-garde photographer Alexander Rodchenko advocates the advantages of living and creating art in a modern city. He denounces painting as old-fashioned and irrelevant: \u201cEvery modern cultured man must wage war against art, as against opium\u201d (1988: 253). Instead, he champions photography, a truly revolutionary medium, and insists on capturing such manifestations of modernity as \u201cmultistory buildings, specially erected factories, plants, etc., two- to-three-story-high windows, trams, automobiles, light and space advertisements, ocean liners, airplanes\u201d (2005: 209). According to Rodchenko, the modern city has shifted \u201cthe customary psychology of visual perception,\u201d and he urges his fellow photographers to take pictures from unexpected perspectives, corresponding to the changed environment (2005: 209).<\/p>\n Rodchenko\u2019s photographs of Moscow\u2019s high-rises from his Balconies<\/em> series (1925) employ many of the unusual perspectives he advocates. Captured from a high-floor window, sometimes from the roof, or, alternatively, from the ground looking up, his striking shots reflect the exciting geometry of the modern city. The traditional centered point of view derived from painting, Rodchenko argues, fails to account for this, just as it fails to adequately record \u201cthe street with its rushing automobiles and scurrying pedestrians,\u201d as seen from a high-rise balcony, or a tram window (2005: 209). In \u201cWhat the Eye Does Not See,\u201d his associate Ossip Brik writes that in Rodchenko\u2019s photographs \u201cthe familiar object (the house) suddenly turned into a never-before-seen structure, a fire escape became a monstrous object, balconies were transformed into a tower of exotic architecture\u201d (90). Echoing Rodchenko, Brik insists that film and photography capture things \u201cfrom unexpected viewpoints and in unusual configurations, and we must exploit this possibility\u201d (90).<\/p>\n While serving as a fascinating subject of photography, Moscow\u2019s uniform high-rises provide an incongruous setting for a production of Pasternak\u2019s Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. In his essay \u201cOn the Prose of the Poet Pasternak,\u201d Roman Jakobson writes: \u201cTo belong to a compact collective group and to hold firmly to a particular direction are both repugnant to Pasternak, who is a passionate destroyer of customary affinities\u201d (317). Narrating the story of the Bolshevik Revolution, Zhivago<\/em> remains a private document \u2013 possibly the book\u2019s greatest fault in the eyes of the Soviet state, and the reason for its prohibition in the Soviet Union. The poem \u201cExplanation,\u201d included at the end of the novel, describes Yury Zhivago\u2019s \u201cpassion to break away\u201d as his strongest \u201cpull\u201d (Pasternak 476). Further evidence of this \u201cpassion to break away\u201d is found throughout the novel. Some of his associates at the Hospital of the Holy Cross in Moscow regard Zhivago as \u201cdangerous\u201d; other people, \u201cwho had gone further in their politics,\u201d consider him \u201cnot Red enough\u201d; in short, \u201che didn\u2019t please anyone\u201d (169). His view of the revolution is equally nonconformist: \u201cYou might say that everyone has been through two revolutions \u2013 his own personal revolution as well as the general one\u201d (136).<\/p>\n Performed at the Soviet-built Meridian, the intensely personal Zhivago<\/em> was inevitably transformed into a collective narrative. With its persistent use of choir singing and group dancing, Lyubimov\u2019s show, subtitled \u201ca musical parable,\u201d also contributed to this transformation. The music composed by Alfred Schnittke, Birgit Beumers writes in Yury <\/em><\/p>\n Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre<\/em>, \u201cdid not provide any solo musical scores, but offered choral music to accompany some of Pasternak\u2019s poems\u201d (268). \u201cSome metaphors from the novel,\u201d Beumers points out, \u201cwere transformed into theatrical images for the production\u201d; among these was a candle, which in one scene \u201cwas carried in on a spade\u201d (268). She adds that the show \u201cwas commissioned by a Western producer for the Vienna Festival,\u201d and originally premiered in Vienna in 1993 (266). According to Beumers\u2019s largely favourable account, the Taganka\u2019s production did not \u201caim at a rendering of the events of the novel\u201d; instead, it raised a more general question: \u201cBut who are we, and where do we come from?\u201d (274).<\/p>\n While appealing to the Western spectator, the show demonstrated less sensitivity to the domestic audience. \u201cMise-en-scene does not have to be faithful to a dramatic text,\u201d Patrice Pavis argues in his book Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture<\/em> (26). He asks: \u201cIf producing a faithful mise-en-scene means repeating, or believing one can repeat, by theatrical means what the text has already said, what would be the point of mise-en-scene?\u201d (27).In Pavis\u2019 opinion, \u201cthe undeniable relationship between text and performance\u201d must take the form of a \u201ctransfer or a confrontation of the fictional universe structured by the text and the fictional universe produced by the stage\u201d (28). This is a convincing argument, particularly when applied to the adaptations of well-known works of literature, such as Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet<\/em> or Pushkin\u2019s Eugene Onegin<\/em>, both staged victoriously at the Taganka Theatre.\u00a0 With Pasternak\u2019s novel, which many Russians were only discovering when the show first premiered in the early 1990s, the theatre\u2019s defamiliarized approach produced a less satisfying result. Sometimes, a more \u201cfaithful\u201d mise-en-scene is the better route to take: to be able to read, you first must learn the alphabet.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Beumers, Birgit. Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre, 1964-1994<\/em>. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997.<\/p>\n Brik, Ossip.\u00a0 \u201cWhat the Eye Does Not See,\u201d in ed. Liz Wells, The Photography Reader<\/em>. London, New York: Routledge, 2003.<\/p>\n Carlson, Marvin A., Places of Performance : The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture<\/em>. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1989.<\/p>\n Coupland, Douglas. City of Glass: Douglas Coupland’s Vancouver<\/em>. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009.<\/p>\n Ikonnikov, Andrei. Russian Architecture of the Soviet Period<\/em>. Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1988.<\/p>\n Jakobson, Roman. Language in Literature<\/em>. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1987.<\/p>\n Lefebvre, Henri.\u00a0 \u201cNotes on the New Town,\u201d in ed. During, Simon, The Cultural Studies Reader<\/em>. London, New York: Routledge, 2007.<\/p>\n Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. London: Collins Harvill, 1988.<\/p>\n Pavis, Patrice. Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture<\/em>. London, New York : Routledge, 1992.<\/p>\n Rodchenko, Alexander.\u00a0 \u201cAgainst the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot,\u201d in ed. Bowlt, John, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934<\/em>. New York : Thames and Hudson, 1988.<\/p>\n Rodchenko, Alexander. \u201cThe Paths of Contemporary Photography,\u201d in ed. Alexander N. Lavrentiev, Aleksandr Rodchenko : Experiments for the Future : Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings<\/em>. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005.<\/p>\n Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again<\/em>. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.<\/p>\n Image Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n All images the author’s own.<\/p>\n This article is licensed under a\u00a0\u00a0Creative Commons 3.0 License<\/a> although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing\u00a0under the\u00a0Canadian\u00a0Copyright Act.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Siemens-fig-1.jpg\" "\\"Siemens")
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