That period of my life could only be described as hectic. I was working as a translator for the Film-Makers Union and for the Theatre Union signing one contract after another.
Broken jewelry...
I found it quite incidentally -
in a family porcelain milk pot...
Broken silver chains,
broken ear-rings,
one ear-ring, the other one lost -
Signs of my hectic youth
when I interpreted for all and sundry in the theatre world,
in the world of movies.
And everyone great gave me some jewelry
as a sign of appreciation of my help.
And I always lost something,
broke something...
for I was always rushed...
Those days were really hectic.
That was the very end of the Soviet era, the dawn and the sunset of perestroika - 1987-1990. From the point of the general atmosphere that was the best period in Russia - at least for me. And for many intellectual and creative people who could sigh with relief and feel that now and from now on we shall be reading, seeing and communicating with the rest of the world, the world's treasures and be free to do what we like. That's what we thought. Of course, we could not imagine that the free market economy was also a nightmare, but a different one as compared to the Soviet rule. We could not imagine all the trash and pornographic production polluting all the channels of mass media. We could not imagine all the crime that gushed onto us after 1990. We could not imagine inflation, lack of social security, homelessness, unemployment and many other things whose meaning is our own entity now and not just the intellectual knowledge of the West. But back then we were happy to breathe some freh air of the seeming freedom, which actually does not exist anywhere on Earth. We were in the process - out of the frying pan into the fire, but we did not quite know where exactly we were flying to. We were in the process of a happy flight. We were happy to recover from the paralyses of the Soviet fear. I, in particular, was happy to get a chance to work with living English without fearing the KGB. At least, I stopped fearing.
Happy recollections, especially those of 1987-1989, for 1990 grew already somewhat gloomy when things disappeared from the shops and Moscow began to look like a forlorn city, a zone from Andrey Tarkovsy's film "Stalker".
But at the end of the 1980s the iron curtain fell and life seemed to be getting better. However, if you think the situation is getting better that means you are underestimating something - luckily, this dialectic way of thinking comes only with the years.
And back then, at the end of 1980s, I was young and full of hopes for the future. I felt that now my dream will come true - I will make a translator. My feeling was correct. To understand this feeling one should know the atmosphere of the Institute of Foreign Languages during the Soviet times. All the teachers were drilling through our heads that we would never ever find jobs with the living language, we would never ever go abroad, because only the children of the party bosses or diplomats could succeed. But with the new times I felt - I will make a translator despite all the iron curtains, all the Soviet authorities, all the teachers, all the... I don't know who the hell else... I was right - life made me a wonderful present.
During the period of 1987-1991 I worked, as I said, for the Union of Film-Makers and the Theatre Union in Russia, England and the USA translating for such celebrities as Richard Gere, Peter Brook, Vanessa Redgrave, George White (Founder and President of the Eugene O'Neil Theatre Center), Jacques d'Amboise (director of the National Dance Institute), American actress Cecily Tyson, Paul Winter (ecological jazzman composing music with the voices of whales), Roger Payne (a whale biologist), Leonard Nimoy (star actor and director of "Star Treck 4"), Deborah Young (a film critic), directors of theatre festivals as well as some Russian celebrities - Alexander Kaidanovsky, Sergei Paradganov, Galina Volchek... This list can be continued, but the magazine volume helps me to restrain my recollections.
RICHARD GERE
I met Richard Gere at the American Movie Week in Moscow in 1987. By the irony of the genre I did not even know what he was - back then I did not have a video tape-recorder while films with Gere existed only in the pirate video recording.
Richard and I were having a great chat at the fourche. I was telling him about Moscow and where I, in his words, "had learnt English so well" when another interpreter came by. She was very proud of herself since she did possess the up-to-date technical equipment. She saw me talking to Gere, turned pale, then all the shades red and started to mumble something staggering. Gere could not make head or tail of her utterances the long and the short of which was all about the fact that she had seen him in many films.
When Richard finally made out what she was trying to tell him in English he made a short pause and went on talking to me who did not have the slightest idea who or what he was.
He must have wanted a full value communication with a person of a different culture and not the stuttering and stammering of a current fan of his.
Gere had a very natural way of communicating. He was democratic, attentive to his interlocutor, really interested in what you were telling him. There was nothing false, snobbish, vulgar or brutal about him - in a word, he was devoid of all the complexes abounding in the Soviet movie elite.
Many years later I learnt that Gere had got a blessing from a Buddhist Saint. Maybe he was so easy-going by nature or was just successfully using the Buddhist philosophy in life, but anyway he left a very bright trace in my memory - that of a real person, sincere, full of life, yearning for new cultural impressions and knowledge.
I remember his eyes sparkling when I translated a press conference at the Film-Makers' Union while he was sitting in the audience hall. After the conference he came up to me and asked: "How did you know "by hook or crook"?" While for me this expression was not a top-translating level, it was just our active vocabulary at the Institute of Foreign Languages. The real thing in the language for me would be colloquial English, which we were devoid of during the Soviet regime due to the lack of communication with the native English speakers and the West at large.
GEORGE WHITE
Among other events that I translated - American Movie Weeks, Theatre and Film Festivals, the so-called "round tables", Theatre and Film Conferences - one of the brightest impressions was my work with George White, especially the first Shelykovo Seminar of 1988.
That was a kind of an experiment - to have an O'Neil twin seminar in Russia, to engraft the O'Neil experience in the Russian soil, so to speak.
This Russian seminar was staged in the former estate of the Russian dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky in Shelykovo, Kostromskaya Guberniya (area), which has gradually evolved since the 19th с. into the so-called Actors' House for Creativity.
George and I plus the dramatists Sergei Kokovkin and Alexander Gelman got there by van with a feeling that we were going to the very depth of Russia. Kokovkin tried to make us laugh and we were in high spirits, except that I was dead by the end of the trip for I had to translate all the jokes throughout the way - that means I was the tongue for several people. However, that was only the beginning - the seminar lasted two weeks and everybody wanted to talk to George all day long. Above all George delivered a series of lectures to the actors and playwrights. In a word, I had to survive as well as enjoy.
The seminar was organized in the image and likeness of the O'Neil one: young dramatists who had sent their plays to the competition were given a chance to hear their texts from the stage (the invited actors were reciting the text from the script without learning it by heart) to be able to introduce corrections.
Almost seventeen years have past since that time, but the joy of the event, its turbulent creative energy still lives in my memory among the happiest recollections of my life. I made friends with the actors and the directors while the experience in general was a door-opener. We lived on the bosom of nature - we worked together, thought together, experimented together, swam in the lakes and rivers, danced together, went for walks in the wood. Some of the actors have remained my friends up to this day.
Even the strong anti-Semitic passions that made an uproar among the Russian common folk at that time did not spoil the mood. Those dark people considered that we, Russians, lived so awfully badly, because the Jews had taken all the important positions and ruled the world. And of course, they thought that all the people at the Theatre Union were "the nasty Jews". The actor's club was blown up in the center of Moscow, as a result a unique theatre library and the famous 18thc. Dancing Hall were ruined. That's how the anti-Semites were fighting against "the nasty Jews" - blowing up cultural things. They blamed the Jews for destroying the Russian culture calling themselves "the guardians of the Russian culture." Even some actors at the Shelykovo seminar thought the Jewish mafia was ruling the theatre world.
I tried to explain the problem to George, but I don't think he really took it too much to heart. He said there were a lot of Jewish people in the American theatre world and so what.
For George that event was not only educating us, Russians. He enjoyed being out of office, jogging every morning and communicating with everyone as well as life in the country.
I loved translating for George and talking him. He has a very deep understanding of the arts and the cultural values in general. Being a rich man and the son of a famous artist, he has given all his energy, knowledge, experience and inspiration to the arts and theatre art in particular. And not only as an actor and a director - George's great achievement also includes promotion of theatre art - exchange of theatre students between Russia and the USA, exchange of actors, directors, playwrights and even audiences. George is the kind of person who wants to help and promote when he sees something bright and talented and not to dump.
Yes, many years have passed. Since that time I have written dozens of articles about arts and people of art, published my books of poetry, have become a photo artist, but George remains that level of a person for me that is rarely, almost never achieved by the rich men in Russia. I think, several generations of the rich should pass before these people will understand that the excess of their money has to support the cultural entity of the nation.
How the O'Neil started
(interview with George White)
The O'Neil Center started as an attempt in 1963 to save some old buildings on the shore in Waterford, Connecticut, the town, which I brought up for being for it had been burnt down by the town as a training program for the local fire department. Also I thought it would be an ideal place to have a theatre. Although I was working in television myself at that time, but since Eugene O'Neil grew up exactly in a mile or so away, in the city of New London next door and had given all of his collection of papers to Yale University, and as the fact that I've been in Yale as both an undergraduate and a graduate at the Yale Drama School, I thought this would be an ideal setting for a memorial to Eugene O'Neil and that, perhaps, Yale University could get together with my home town, the town of Waterford, to create a program, maybe a summer extra curriculum to the Yale School of Drama.
At the eleventh hour just when both the Yale Drama School and the town of Waterford were very excited they proposed this to the trustees of what was called the Yale Corporation. As the last matter of the eleventh hour the Yale Corporation turned down the idea of taking over this.
So, I was twenty years oldat that time and very embarrassed that I've got everybody excited about the possibility of doing a summer program with the Yale School of Drama and I had to come up with a better idea in order to save face, I must confess. So the idea was to start some kind of summer program and in those days it was very difficult for a young person to have his or her work produced in New York, so we decided to start a what we called a playwrights' conference where playwrights would come to Connecticut and discuss their needs and aspirations with different people of different parts of the theatre - that was the first playwrights' conference.
And after that came the idea to create a program for actually producing work in the most simplistic way where we have top professionals, the best people we could find to be able to do their work in Connecticut and see how it worked on by top professionals and they could learn on the basis that it was terribly important to have a place where a young playwright could fail as well as succeed, because we felt that failure is the first step of how you learn - a little kid learns to walk by standing up and falling down, not just running in the first moment. It is getting on its feet. And that's the same way with playwrights.
Over the years this has evolved. In 1969 we needed this kind of thing, because we had become overly famous, too famous and we began to get all kinds of requests for plays coming out of the O'Neil Center and we were beginning to lose the ability to fail - we had to succeed. And the person that I chose to bring that order out of chaos was Lloyd Richards who'd been with us since 1966. The first playwrights' conference by the way was in 1965 and my initial process with the town of Waterford was in 1962-1963 when we had the negotiations with the town of Waterford. We don't own the property, we actually lease the property on a long- term basis and the percentage of the receipts - whatever it may be - goes to the town of Waterford even to this day. The first actual playwrights' conference in planning was in 1965 after we had renovated some of the buildings. I personally helped with my own hands to build the amphitheatre, which we did. A lot of volunteer labor. A lot was done with local people volunteering for nothing to help us pull all this together.
We gave parties with people from the local colleges and we would have pizzas and bier and I would show them how to do the masonry work to build the amphitheatre. So, a lot of that was part of our short guide in the history.
Subsequently there we brought in the theatre of the depth, we brought in the National Theatre Institute, which has evolved as part of the O'Neil Center and we have the National Music Theatre Conference, a training ground for critics, a program of using arts to teach children to learn their disciplines, the ABC, a lot better by using arts programs and arts techniques.
In 1974 we brought Eugene O'Neil's house in New London as a museum of his life and work in a place where young scholars and artists or playwrights could come and live and work if they so chose. So that's the basic history of the different programs we have.
HOW GEORGE WHITE MET GRISHA TO BE AN ASTI
I met Grisha (Gregory Nersessyan - O.S.) in 1983 when he was working for the Soviet copy-right agency VAAP. He came to Waterford with, I think, the 1983 delegation. He was a translator and a great help. The O'Neil Center was the only cultural link between the Soviet Union and the US during 1980-1985. Misha Roshin, Alexander Stein, Valery Ivanov on the Soviet part and me on the American part made up an arrangement between the US delegation going to the Soviet Union and the Soviets coming to the US. We had a lot of bumps on our way, because sometimes it was very difficult for the Soviet citizens to get visas to the US, but they managed off and on to rather a bumpy history to do that and the most expeditious person with the copy-right agency was Grisha.
Because, I think, we had this long history of friendship and association with theatre people in the Soviet Union via VAAP in 1987 we decided to formalize a relationship with the O'Neil Center getting a blessing of the Soviet Theatre Union while VAAP was in the background to create a unity called the American -Soviet Theatre Initiative. Parenthetically we call it ASTI, not SATI, because my mother is Italian and we all laughed about the fact that ASTI is the best wine growing area in Italy and that was as amazing coincidence and fun.
Misha Shatrov and me became ASTI Soviet and American chairmen. We created a series of initiatives, which had to do with exchanges of plays. One of them was Shelykovo, which continues to this day. We've also done a series of designers' exchanges, administrators back and forth... And we had plays like "The Walk in the Woods" done under the ASTI banner.
ASTI is not a formalized program since the demise of the Soviet Union. We did, I think, excitingly, Gubarev's play "The Brides of Chernobyl" basically under the ASTI label, the ASTI program called "First Snows" with American and Russian actors both in the US and Russia. "The First Snow" program with Antonov's play here and then we did a program called "No Mercy" about the exploration of the atomic bomb.
Continuing our exchange after "The Brides of Chernobyl" we tried to build on that experience moving the play around the world, because it's very important during the growing nuclear age. I did a program in Russia with the Hermitage Theatre - an adaptation of Voltairian "Catharine the Great's Correspondence".
As for the O'Neil we have a big media center for television and film and sound in Waterford, Connecticut. We're also going to create a training program for the media in Waterford very much as our National Theatre Institute for the young people to learn and be able to deal with the new technology.
George White's Life story
As for my life story, whatever that is, I come from three generations of painters. In 1992 the Kolomenskoye Museum in Moscow did an exhibition of my grandfather - Henry C. White, my father - Nelson C. White and my brother who is also an artist.
I grew up and have always worked in the theatre. Since I was nineteen, first of all I was managing the International Ballet Festival in Nervi, Italy, then working as the stage manager for the Azuma Kabuki, the Japanese company. I was undergraduate of Yale at the time. Then I worked as a stage manager of Yale. After that I went under the Yale School of Drama as an actor and a director and I currently am a director. I have directed pretty much all over the world - I did two big productions in China and I obviously worked off Broadway here in New York and around the United States in many different areas.
So, I've been an actor in television and on the stage, but I prefer to primarily be in the directing side of things. And I am on a number of different boards and Committees: I am on the National Council of the Arts and the Metropolitan Opera Guild and The International Theatre Institute (ITI), The Arts and Business Council. So I do what I can to keep the arts an important part of cultural life in this country. And sometimes I wonder... when I' gonna die... and we're in the process of cutting out support...and one of my jobs now is, of course, trying to keep the importance of the arts in life, so that the public will understand and take some of their tax money and support this vital part of every nation's heritage.
So, all my life I've stepped working in the theatre, except for a couple of years that I had to be in the army, which I hated. But even in the army I was doing soldier shows and entertaining. So that seems to be my life at that point.
I'm married for almost fifty years and have three children and three grandchildren.
Two years ago when George visited my solo show at the ASTI gallery his first thought was to contact me to Ronald Feldman's Gallery of Modern Art in New York and arrange my trip to the US. "You've been to New York already", he said remembering that I translated for the Director of the National Dance Institute Jacques d'Amboise.
JACQUES d'AMBOISE
I cooperated with Jacques d'Amboise for four years. We first met in 1987 at the American Movie Week in Moscow. We sat all evening at the Central House of Writes and Jacques was telling me about his future project of 1990 where he was going to include Russian children. I wondered at the amount of time spent by him on the story and the enthusiasm with which he was telling it to me. Why did he choose me, I thought? Who am I to him? Just a translator. I did not realize back then that it was meant to happen and by some Upper Plan I was chosen to be Jacques's translator for the 1990 Event already.
The following year Jacques participated at a Theatre Symposium in Moscow, which I translated. He recognized me at once and when he came to Moscow in 1990 to do his Russian project we met as old acquaintances.
Several years ago Jacques received a governmental award "For The Lifetime Achievement". His lifetime achievement is not trivial, indeed.
Jacques d'Amboise began to dance at the age of seven. He was enrolled into the company of the New York City Ballet when he was still a teenager. At the age of seventeen he was already starring and at twenty one appeared in Broadway shows and in the movies.
Jacques became one of the favorite dancers of George Balanchine, master choreographer of the New York City Ballet. "Balanchine and I were like father and son", confessed Jacques. D'Amboise had been the starring dancer of the company during thirty-one year when he got a serious injury and could not continue any more...
Several years after his elder son fell seriously ill. The doctors thought he would die. The doctors, but not Jacques. Jacques did not lose hope. Instead of giving way to depression he began to come to the hospital playroom, entertained the children by telling them stories and danced for them, made them smile and laugh lifting their spirits. He instantly realized that it was fun working with children.
Soon Jacques's son recovered and then Jacques went to his children's school to ask the school headmaster if he could teach dance there. The headmaster agreed.
Many boys at school thought dance was just for the girls. Jacques changed their minds. His dance class was attended by eighty boys and Jacques taught them to jump higher and further then they could imagine. Rehearsals lasted for long weeks and finally - the performance. That event was the beginning of the National Dance Institute.
This happened in 1976. Since that time the NDI has grown tremendously. Every academic year is topped up by a performance called Event of the Year.
The NDI was created for children. What kind of children? All the children who are ready to give their young energy to dance. Jacques's classes are attended by children from private schools (whose rich parents are partially covering the costs of the NDI projects) as well as by children from the streets - black, mulattos, Hispanic... All together. Jacques did a lot of International projects with the children of China, India and Russia, in particular.
My happy star being aware of my inexpressible love for and a lifetime romance with the English language made it so that I was taken as an interpreter for the Russian project in New York.
It was a musical called "The Shooting of Dan McGrew". Jacques auditioned fifteen children in Moscow - unprofessional dancers, but those whom he thought to be fit for rhythmic movement. According to him, professional ballet children are hard to teach dancing in the NDI style. Jacques needed children musicians as well. I contacted him to the Prokofiev School of Music #1, which I had graduated from myself in my green years. Alexander Kanevsky, the school headmaster, offered a violinist, Maria Volkova, a flutist, Dmitry Savyolov, and a pianist, Sergey Zubkov, who was also a composer and wrote the "Bear Dance" for the Russian kids. By the way, all of them are now quite well-known in the music world.
In New York our Russian children were complaining to me when they were called: "Russian! Bears! To the stage!" I tried to make them feel better by assuring them that the Americans did that just to indicate the name of the dance.
It was difficult and at the same time fascinating to work for Jacques. He is extremely active, demanding, sometimes even demonic. Above all he involved me in the dancing process when he needed to show the children their steps in the pair-dance. I just reconciled with the fact keeping in mind his rejecting another translator who was not emotional enough and did not switch in Jacques's energetic flow. "Let him work in a drug store with his temperament!" - exclaimed Jacques with indignation.
As for me, Jacques did not let me switch off, so to speak, even in a restaurant. "Your mind is wandering, I can tell", said he looking at me with irony, which meant: "Since I have taken you, you mustn't be distracted." He could really read my mind, because at that moment I was dreaming about a trip to the mountains with Italian mountaineers - I undertook it just before going to New York.
So, "The Bear Dance" was rehearsed in Moscow. After every rehearsal the children got dark circles under their eyes. And my only wish was to survive. However, I took an inner responsibility for the children and even ordered a prayer to their health in the Church before we went to New York. I was fully gratified for that.
According to the original estimate I was not supposed to go to New York - the NDI had planned to be using local interpreters for the 1990 Event. But Jacques and his choreographer Ellen Weinstein could see my commitment. During the last rehearsal days in Moscow Jacques kept telling me as if he forgot that I was not going:
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Wait till you see it in New York.
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I'm not going.
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Right. I forgot.
And again:
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Wait till you see it in New York.
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I'm not coming.
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Yes, that's right.
And then almost on the day before Jacques left Moscow I felt I was going to New York. It was impossible. All the documents of the chaperons and the children had been filled out half a year before and at the moment were undergoing control at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But there is nothing impossible for Jacques. He made up his mind. We went to the Soros Foundation.
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Pay for her. She's been with us for four years. I want her to come to New York.
Half an hour later my personal form was filled in and went to the Foreign Ministry and on the next day with the same note - to the American Embassy.
And in New York... Oh, my Goodness! The NDI people made us feel so welcome, so comfortable - the choreographers Ellen Weinstein and Lori Clinger, Jacques's help Betsy Gardella, Amy Palka-Sellars, Rosemary Carey, Kristina Borovicka, Jennifer Homans and, of course, the director of the Soviet program Denise Cogan. And many others whose name have escaped my memory, but whose love has stayed inside my heart to this day. Yes, friends for ever, not withstanding the distance of space and time. And how friendly were the American children's parents with whom the Russian children were staying!
As for the kids themselves I had never before and after experienced such tides of love. It was an ocean of love. Aren't all the kids grateful when they feel you are interested in them, not indifferent to their ups and downs, successes and failures. The Russian children made me watch all the rehearsals, even when it was not necessary, eagerly reacting to all my reactions and discussing their triumphs and slips with me later. In the morning when I was walking along the corridor of the Brooklyn Academy of Music two thousand children's hands were stretching for me - white hands, black hands, yellow hands. "You look so nice today". "I've brought you a candy." And at the end of our stay: "Don't leave. We love you so much."
Not only colored kids participated in the show, but also blind girls. During the performances when those girls danced many women burst into tears. That was more than touching. At the end of their scene a blind girl wearing a tutu was walking along the stage to the curtain - alone, as if groping in the dark and yet knowing her way very well - alone, all the way across the stage... That was more than touching - that was a kind of a victory over the trick of the Sky.
Jacques managed to put together different parts of his performance, including us, "the Russian bears", within only two weeks. If I were him I would have given way to despair, but he knew what he was doing and things worked out great. "He has the patience of a Saint," said Irene Bunis, the wardrobe supervisor.
So, three weeks of happiness for a thousand kids, their parents, the chaperons and the technical stuff. Very few people manage to do anything close to this during their lifetimes - making so many people really happy. There is a saying - the only way to make the children good is to make them happy. Jacques certainly managed to do this.
I was also very happy in New York. It was easy and pleasant to work for Jacques there. Very soon I realized that Jacques needed the energy of a thousand kids - then everybody was fine, but when there were only fifteen - beware! During the rehearsals with the Russian kids alone the Moscow situation repeated itself: by the end of the rehearsal the kids got dark circles under their eyes and I was like a squeezed lemon.
Jacques confessed why he loved mass performances so much - due to the huge tides of the human energy creating the rhythm of the dance, which is the rhythm of the Universe in the long run.
Yes, I was happy not only due to the kids' love - the general atmosphere of the event was marvelous: sincere and generous. Many people invited me out to dinner, some asked me to stay with them and everybody was open and friendly. The love of the Americans was expressed not only spiritually, but also in the material form. As soon as they learnt that the Russian shops were empty (it was 1990 when our country was changing for the market economy - that's why things disappeared from the stores) presents burst onto me. That was great for I did not have time to study the New York shops - I translated for sixteen hours a day. The presents were swelling and I was horrified - I had come to New York with just a small travel bag and had no idea of how I was going to take all the presents back home. "Don't worry," they said. On the last day a "Titanic" of a suite-case arrived at the Majestic Theatre. Later in the night when I opened it in my hotel room I found six other cases in it - each smaller one in the bigger one, just like the Egyptian sarcophagus, which I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (we stayed at Mayflower Hotel, Central Park West, and one of the few things I managed to do in New York on my own was the Metropolitan Museum - a long dream of mine). When I came back to Moscow it took me months on end to give those presents away to my relatives and friends.
Going back to New York I must say that the whole experience was not just work. Jacques organized fantastic things for the kids - a dinner at Macy's restaurant, a picnic at his friends' villa in Greenwich, a boat trip to the Statue of Liberty (where the children danced and had fun), an excursion to the Mayor's House in New York (we were amazed to see that the then Mayor was a black man). The children went up the twin buildings of the Center for International Trade (tragically ruined by the terrorist act of Sept. 11, 2001).
We were also lucky to have a day off, including me. The American children's parents took the Russian children who were staying with them to where they chose and since I was given a carte blanch - for once - I decided to go to the ocean, to Long Island. I will never forget the impression - that endless uninterrupted stretch of water, sand and the sky - not a cave or a tree, or a line of mountains... Nothing but a continuous stretch of the elements - white sand, water and air. And you are in the very middle of the world when the globe seems to round off on all the sides of the horizon.
The children musicians had a special treat - Jacques took them to a radio station for an interview - it was broadcast along the Eastern shore.
The 1990 Event of the Year was topped up by a gala party, which made me realize once again how many talents Jacque combined - that of a dancer, of a choreographer, a teacher, a director, a financial genius and an organizer. Only now, fifteen years later, I can really see what a virtuoso Jacque was at the NDI financial policy enrolling the children from private schools, whose rich parents partially covered the projects, to give an opportunity to dance and develop to the children from the streets and colored children as well as blind girls. For example, the parents of private school children had to buy very expensive tickets for the last performance of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and the gala party while other rich people were invited to the Gala Party to interest the rich parents in the paid participation.
Now, having experience of organizing my own solo art shows, I can see the difficulties Jacques had to tackle with, but back then I was just a light-minded happy translator loved by Jacques, the children and the American stuff. Yes, with the years we learn to put ourselves into other people's shoes and try to see not only whatever lies on the surface, but a little deeper.
During the gala party one could get photographed in the retro style - we put on 19th с. clothes while the caption at the bottom of the photo said: DANGEROUS BAND. Wanted for coach robbery and the like... Award $5,000.
Jacques did not forget the Russian chaperons either - he gave us a good-by dinner at his grand house. He offered us to order food from a Chinese restaurant. Of course, back then, in 1990, we had no Chinese restaurants in Moscow and all the chaperons ordered two or three courses the way we are used to in Russia. "That will be too much food," exclaimed Jacque knowing what a Chinese dish really is, but the chaperons insisted. "All right. You'll get it, but you won't leave the house until you eat it all up", said Jacque. The chaperons agreed. When the food did arrive we realized we wouldn't be able to finish it in a week. But Jacques had mercy on us and we went home stuffed by as much as we could consume while the remnants of the food were put into the fridge by Jacques's charming black maid.
During the 1990 Event I enjoyed working and communicating with the black people in New York - both the children participating in the show and the chaperons taking care of them. We even visited a service at a black church and listened to the black priest. "Forgive the gossiping lips" - I remembered his prayers-instructions very well. However, in New York there was not much time for gossip - we were too busy with work.
Another interesting moment of my stay in New York was meeting the daughter of Vladimir Mayakovsky, famous Russian poet of the Revolution of 1917. I translated that meeting at the request of the Prokofiev School headmaster Alexander Kanevsky.
THE DAUGHTER OF VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY MS THOMPSON
Alexander Kanevsky, headmaster of the Prokofiev school of music, met Mayakovsky's daughter at the request of the Soviet Union of Writers and the Mayakovsky Memorial Museum in Moscow.
Yelena Vladimirovna Mayakovskaya was born from the love of the great poet of the 1917 Revolution in Russia Vladimir Mayakovsky and Yelizaveta Zibert, a Russian German whose roots go back to the German colonists of the time of Catherine the Great. Zibert's first husband was an Englishman, a Mr Jones who took her to the USA where they soon separated.
Yelizaveta Zibert met Mayakovsky in 1925 at the lectures he was giving in America. The Russian community in the USA was quite strong at that time, moreover Ellen Jones (born Yelizaveta Zibert) was friends with the Russian artist David Burlyuk - that's how she got to Mayakovsky's lectures.
A year later, in 1926, Yelena Vladimirovna was born. The second husband of Ellen Jones was an American, Peter Thompson. He adopted Yelena Vladimirovna and the girl became Patricia Thompson. Ellen Jones asked her daughter not to tell anyone that she was Mayakovsky's daughter, maybe because her husband loved her very much and treated the girl as his own child or maybe because she was afraid of Lily Brik, Mayakovsky's lover and wife of Osip Brik, a literary critic and Mayakovsky's publisher - they were a famous love triangular and Mayakonsky was sharing the apartment with the Briks.
The reason for fearing Lily was a feeling that she could have been a secret GPU (former KGB) agent. Several years ago a document confirming Lily's involvement with the GPU was published in one of the books on Mayakovsky.
Lily took many attempts to find Mayakovsky's daughter and her mother and hardly out of desire to help them. According to Kanevsky, Mayakovsky repeatedly warned the mother of Yelena Vladimirovna about the fact that Lily was connected with the GPU and they had to beware of her.
When Ellen Jones died Peter Thompson also asked Yelena Vladimirovna not to tell anyone about her origin up until his death. He was sure he would die soon, because he loved his wife Ellen so much and had nothing to live for after her death. That's exactly what happened.
After Mayakovsky's death in 1930 the lion's share of his artistic legacy went to Lily Brik. And although a Memorial Museum of the poet was created by a governmental decree in 1938, Lily, in the words of Kanevsky, still kept most of the paintings given to Mayakovsky by some great artists of that time. Outstanding people of art were happy to communicate with Mayakovsky since communism was viewed by the advanced minds of that epoch as a hope for a better future and many people sympathized with the new spirit of freedom.
The last husband of Lily Brik was an art critic Vasily Abgarovich Katanyan and Lily made his son Vasily Vasilyevich Katanyan, a film director, her legatee. In the words of Kanevsky, poet Andrey Voznesensky, gave a TV talk saying that Mayakovsky was done away with not without Lily's help. However, according to Muza Anatolyevna, the Mayakovsky memorial museum scientific department's head, Lily was in England at the time of his death, be it a suicide or assassination.
By the logic of life soon after interviewing Kanevsky I met Andrey Voznesensky. When I asked the poet about his TV talks on Lily he only shook his head saying he had never ever blamed her for anything of the kind and actually liked Lily very much. The legatee of Katanyan and Brik also denied Lily's involvement with the GPU and Mayakovsky's death - probably out of fear to lose the legatee's rights for if he had accepted the version of Lily's involvement he would have had to give the legacy to the Poet's Memorial Museum.
Kanevsky, however, thinks Lily was involved with the death of Mayakovsky reporting about him to the GPU. To prove his point of view he gave some interesting facts, for example: as soon as composer Sergey Prokofiev left his first wife (who was Spanish) for Ms Mendelson (later she became Mendelson-Prokofieva) the Spanish woman was sent to prison right away. And in case of Mayakovsky and Lily, such a figure as the National poet of the Revolution was done away with and Lily did not suffer in any way - on the contrary she became Mayakovsky's legatee. What was the matter? Did the power change? No, the power remained the same - it was sending others to prison executing them while it took a great care of Lily. This fact speaks for itself.
As for Mayakovsky, in the words of Kanevsky, he loved Lily so much that he did not only share her with Osip Brik, but gave her the best things he could. For example, the first car appears in Moscow and Mayakovsky gives it to Lily while he did not help his close relatives in any way. Muza Anatolyevna confirmed Lily's involvement with the GPU saying there is a book at the museum publishing a document about Lily's cooperation with the fore-runner of the KGB. However. she persistently denied Lily's involvement with the poet's death saying that history needs facts confirming documents and not intuitive suppositions and repeated that at the moment of Mayakovsky's death Lily was in England. I agree, but I also think that Lily's stay in England at the moment of her lover's death does not confirm or prove Lily's involvement with the affair - it's clear she did not shoot him with her own hand as a classical killer - it's a different story.
So, how did Patricia Thompson actually venture to declare her connection to Mayakovsky? In the words of Muza Anatolyevna, the Poet's Museum has been attacked by dozens of women saying they were close to the poet. But history is history - one needs confirming facts.
That's why when at the end of the 1980s an exhibition of Alexander Rodchenko in New York was visited by an elderly woman who started caressing the photos of Mayakovasky with tears in her eyes saying "Papa, papa" no one took her seriously. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko whom she addressed just brushed her aside.
However, a journalist from "Ekho Planety" magazine got interested. Ms Thompson invited him over to her apartment to show him letters addressed to "the two Ellens" - to the mother and the daughter, as well as Mayakovsky's drawings.
When she met Kanevsky in 1990 Patricia Thompson, in the words of Kanevsky, confirmed the version of Lily's involvement with her father's death. Frankly speaking, I don't remember it, although I did translate that meeting - there were too many other American impressions connected with the NDI and the euphoria of the American life that we were shown. A lot of things were happening for the first time in my life. However, I do remember my feelings - at the beginning of the meeting I felt somewhat self-conscious while the rest of the American time was an absolute bliss and emancipation.
In the words of Kanevsky, Patricia was still full of fear: she remembered her mother fearing Lily and the KGB because of Mayakovsky's warnings. She was even cautious towards Kanevsky, as he recollects. She came to the "Conservatory" restaurant at the "Mayflower" hotel where we were staying accompanied by two young men. She actually called them her literary agents while Kanevsky supposed they were her body-guards. As for me, I have never in my life seen such thin body-guards. Muza Anatolyevna also thinks they were just dealers who wanted to make a good hand of the sensational story. I would rather agree with this line of thinking. But actually, even a humble ability of the mind enables one to imagine the feelings of an elderly woman who has been hiding her identity since her childhood out of fear to lose her life when she finally meets representatives of her communist motherland.
But notwithstanding Ms Thompson's feelings on her way to New York when she arrived and saw Kanevsky surrounded by the children musicians and me tears came into her eyes. Kanevsky gave Yelena Vladimirovna whatever he had brought to New York as presents - Russian porcelain "gzhel", wooden plates and cups - "khokhloma", caviar - everything went to her. "Only the Russian sables are missing," commented Ms Thompson.
Yelena Vladimirovna, as you can see in the photo, did not need any recommendations for us - she took very much after her father, her soul chose the Russian genetic line. Apart from the presents, Kanevsky brought to her an invitation from the Union of Writers (at the Union they did not have money to go to America themselves and then they asked Kanevsky to pass the invitation over to Ms Thompson) and wonderful photos of Mayakovsky - young, handsome, in the prim of life, full of inspiration. Ms Thompson did not strive to get the poet's legacy - she is not a needy person, but a University Professor with a Ph.D on feminism and women's role in society. Back in 1990 she was preparing a Centenary Jubilee Exhibition (staged in 1993) and her priority was to restore her name and visit her parents' motherland.
She came to meet us in New York from Pennsylvania and a year later arrived in Moscow. After that she started coming to Moscow every year and in 2003 (the year of Mayakovsky's 110 jubilee) made a report at the Institute of World Literature at a scientific Conference. In Moscow she also made friends with actress Veronika Polonskaya , the last love of Mayakovsky, and was very much depressed when Polonskaya died.
During her 1991 stay in Moscow Ms Thompson visited the Prokofiev School of Music, stopped by the Prokofiev Museum, the only memorial museum of this genius of the 20th c. musical culture in Russia - this museum is also situated at the Prokofiev School. By the way, the name of Prokofiev was given to the School thanks to the world famous violinist Mstislav Rostrapovich. At the Museum Yelena Vladimirovna saw a photo of her father with Prokofiev - Mayakovsky asked Prokofiev to compose music for his play "Bedbug", but Prokofiev could not do that for some reason and then the music was written by Shostakovich. The Music School gave a concert in honor of Yelena Valdimirovna. Ms Thompson was very moved.
Going back to New York I remember Kanevsky paying 75 dollars at the "Conservatory" restaurant just for coffee giving it to Ms Thompson, her literary agents and me. That was a great blow at our daily allowance granted to us by the NDI. I remind you - it was 1990 when the Russian shops were empty, but even with those expenses the Prokofiev School headmaster managed to buy a computer and a video for the school as he had planned.
"When they asked me at the Union of Writers to pass the invitation to Mayakovsky's daughter I could not say "no". We were educated on the poet's creativity. To us he was extremely brave, gifted, extraordinary. Moreover, we were taught he had no children and all of a sudden I learnt that he had one and in the USA."
And I could not say "no" to my Music School headmaster when he asked me to translate that historical meeting. Just for once I did the right thing in my life.
The story of Mayakovsky and his daughter shows how time places its own accents even though some documents may be missing and facts remain unproved while only love is eternal.
PETER BROOK
At the BAM Majestic Theatre (Brooklyn Academy of Music) in New York I met some people with whom I had worked a year before in Moscow at the Taganka Theatre where Peter Brook brought his production of Chekov's "Cherry Orchard." For example, Irene Bunis, the wardrobe supervisor, and Andrew Feigin, a stage manager. By the way, Irene lent me a hat of Maril Strip to get photographed for fun.
I remember that "Cherry Orchard" month as living as one single family in the theatre - the American company and we, the Russian stuff. I wonder if the Taganka actors have ever experienced anything of the kind - such fraternity, openness and cooperation.
The Americans worked in a very energetic, compact and exact way. I'll give one vivid example showing the drastic difference between the Russian and the American approach. On the first rehearsal day the sets are set up by the Americans. "O.K. Put the sets on both the sides of the middle of the stage." The American technicians measure the middle of the stage and put a vertical strip of white plaster so that the stage is divided into two, then the sets get into their places the way the should. On the next day it is the Russian stuff who put the sets. "Along the center, you say... O.K. What plaster, why a plaster - it's quite clear where the center is." And since everybody has his own point of view as for the middle of the stage the sets stand in a very chaotic way. The Americans, however, were not at all confused by the Russian habitual sluggish manner of doing things and made the Russian stuff work in the American way. That was really amazing.
As for Peter Brook, he amazed me (and not only me) by his soft approach. I had watched many Russian directors working with their actors - those were yelling, cursing, making the air blue, getting furious... Peter never even raised his voice. When he was giving instructions to the actors one could hear a pin drop. "He is so serene," said Andrew Feigin. And, indeed, the actors loved their director.
Another thing that amazed me was the American approach to the costumes. All the underwear skirts and frills were there, all the corsets, so when the wardrobe people helped the actress Rebecca Miller (the beautiful daughter of the famous writer Arthur Miller) to get dressed it took them almost half an hour. The poor audience saw only the outer dresses while the real thing was the underwear - at least from a woman's point of view.
During my work for the company I got friends with the actor Roberts Blossom. He gave me a book of his poetry when he learnt I was also writing. The book was called THE ROCKEFELLERS. It was a very original book of zigzag poetry, which influenced my creativity in a way.