Musings on the Role of Writers and Scripts in Russian Theatre

One of the most striking aspects of the Russian approach to playmaking is the way they handle their scripts: not only is it acceptable for a show to deviate at least somewhat from the original script, it’s kind of expected.

At one point during our talk with Valery Pachejkin at the Gogol Center (Jan. 17), he mentioned that Russian audiences love a foreign name on the poster, but still demand a sort of Russian spin on the play. This has lead to incidents where Pachejkin has found himself rewriting classical works, such as with the Gogol Center’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Let’s think about that for a second: this guy is rewriting Shakespeare. I can almost hear Dona Werner Freeman’s horrified gasp. How could any contemporary writer think to modify the Bard’s immortal lines? The concern is not without merit: too many times have we seen -- in both theater and film -- cringe-inducing productions that attempt to “improve” Shakespeare by modernizing the text or adding extra bits.

But, as applied in Russian theater, this practice is not as egregious as it may at first sound. Over the course of this trip, we’ve been consistently seeing fantastic productions that askew from their original scripts, ranging from minor shifts in scene order in the Maly Theater’s Love & Intrigue to the complete deconstruction in Butusov’s work on plays like Flight and The Seagull. Pachejkin’s Midsummer has been received exceedingly well and I wish we could have seen it while we were in Moscow. The point is, their approach is working; their editing of classical texts not only does not diminish, but in fact enhances, the final product.

Why is this? Maybe it’s because these rewrites are not meant to ‘improve’ the script, per se, but rather to make it more applicable to its audience and to emphasizes the themes that a particular run of the play is focusing on. And this focus on audience is arguably one of the greatest strengths of Russian theatre. When we tell Russian playmakers how impressed we are with their unique approach to the form, they are a little confused because they don’t see what they’re doing as that innovative or revolutionary. That’s because the Russian theatre scene exists in a little bit of a bubble; not many outsiders come to see their plays (this class being an exception). And it has been because of this bubble that the Russians have been able to focus their plays specifically to the home audience. Without the restriction of an aim for mass appeal, there is a lot more room for experimentation.

To be clear, I’m not saying the way we approach the role of the script in American theatre is wrong. There are definite economic and artistic reasons that we have the system that is currently in place. From an economic standpoint, US copyright law helps ensure that our writers are fairly paid for their work and are able to continue supporting themselves in that field. From an artistic standpoint, it prevents someone from making changes that are bad and make the writer look untalented, hurting their reputation as an artist.

Perhaps it is for this second reason that the Russians are more likely to take their liberties with classic works; no one is going to doubt the literary merit of Chekhov or Shakespeare just because of a poorly edited production. But the Russians still do occasionally take on contemporary plays (such as 2003’s The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, which we saw at the Moscow Art Theater) and that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t have to sit on a script for a couple hundred years before we’re allowed to do something new and interesting with it.

And, in a way, I think the strictness of our copyright law is a disservice to writers in some aspects. When we in the US are served with performance contracts that repeatedly and strongly emphasize that we are not allowed to deviate even a single word from the script, the writer is no longer a creative entity. Instead they are an obstacle that has to be worked around, like a small budget or a less-than-ideal venue.

Theatre is all about the collaboration of multiple artists to create the final product. When the writer is removed from being a collaborator, they are somewhat removed as an artist. A play is not made by just one person, and it’s odd that our legal system names one person to be the sole creator of a work. Why is one person’s vision prioritized over everyone else’s?

It’s important that we protect writers legally and financially, but it’s also important that we protect our art from the threat of crippling stagnation.