Anatoly Antohin [old]
An unusual Learning Community Stimulator is Frank Coppola's Workshop
http://workshop.fcoppola.com where he develops good scripts for movies. A script writer submits a script. His script is reviewed only if he reviews 5 other scripts. The good scripts are published. The excellent ones are turned into movies.
Well, when I was learning HTML, I made this page about myself... Now it should be a gateway to Dramlit and Playscript Analysis classes, which have playwrighting components (scenes and one-acts written by students).
Questions
"Soviet Theatre Scripts" -- this is how most searchers come to the page; I wish such a book could be published (The Best Soviet Plays -- "soviet"?)... Most likely I will die without knowing the meaning of "soviet"!
Folks, five years ago in the Summer of 1998 I started my webpages and this page was one of the first. Now script analysis pages grew into several directories under script.vtheatre.net. I teach two drama classes: THR215 Dramatic Literature and THR413 Playscript Analysis -- and both got its own directories. In addition, there is Themes directory; I try to link both directories through topical, not chronological approach. Also, there is PLAYS directory with the online scripts I used for my productions and use for my classes (acting, directing). Not all. I have SHOWS directories with my notes I keep during the productions. Of course, there are many drama analysis pages in three acting and one directing directories. Oh, yes, some "script analysis" pages in Film-North (directing and theory).
Theatre majors, actors and directors, study plays. You will never go far without understanding dramatic texts.
...I leave this page the way it was... Anatoly ( my own plays are for references only, another directory)
Each semester during my first classes new students want to know who I am. To save ourselves time, here is something from my pre-American (personal) history.
Here is the text from this US News & World Report old interview:
A Conversation With Anatoly Antohin
Soviet Theater: Where the Government Is Always the Hero
Anatoly Antohin was a popular playwright and theater critic in the Soviet Union before imigrating to the United States in 1980. His plays include "He-Man" and "Jubilee Child," both of which won awards in Russia. The following is from a conversation with an editor of U. S. News & World Report.
Stars cannot "eclipse the other participants"
There are big differences between Russian and American theater. In the Soviet Union a theater is a collective of actors under a certain director with its own school of acting and style. They work together year after year to produce plays. The individual derives inspiration from the spirit and tradition of that collective. The star of the show is not allowed to completely eclipse the other participants. Each play is rehearsed carefully and long, with attention to every detail. This is what is known as repertory theater. In Russia you go to a play because of the reputation of that particular theater; the play and the actors are of secondary importance. In the United States, however, you go to the theater to see a famous play or a famous actor. The emphasis is on the individual artist and not on the collective.
While there are some repertory theaters in America, the typical theater is a place where a group of people congregate to put on a particular show -- and when the show closes the collective dissolves. I think that in order to develop quality in the U.S. theater over the long run, more repertory theaters are essential.
"A collective embodies the official virtues"
In America a play reflects the individual ideology of the author. Not so in the Soviet Union. There only one ideology is permitted-the official ideology of the state and the party. The hero on the stage is not the individual but a collective that embodies the official virtues. The state is always on the right side, whereas in America there is often a conflict between the hero and the state. The sheriff or congressman who is supposed to be the representative of government is not always the good guy here.
On the stage in the Soviet Union you must present collective - not individual - problems. Love, marriage, divorce, conflicts between parents and children - all such problems must be presented in a collective socio-political context. Otherwise you're guilty of "abstructive humanism."
"Power based on man's herd instinct"
Censorship in the Soviet Union is all-pervasive, but the official organization that censors texts before publication or staging-Glavut - is only a small part of the picture. The censor prefers to work with the author or playwright rather than the manuscript. lf he can condition the author to think and write in a certain way, he may not need to censor the manuscript or may even allow some occasional lapses in it.
Hence a whole system of conditioning and selection exists. The authorities spend much time and money to seek out their kind of writer - one who, like a domesticated animal, will easily adjust to the demands of the regime. No real writer or playwright eudowed with the gift of "right seeing" and of faithfully putting down what he sees can accommodate himself to these Soviet requirements.
What impels the Soviet authorities to impose those controls? Fear. Soviet power is based on man's herd instinct, on that part of him which is afraid of his own self and of assuming responsibility for his own life. But that is only a small part of every man. The other part, which constitutes his separateness as an individual and which is traditionally addressed by religion and by a free literature, they have no control over. Their power is limited and fragile-hence their fear and repressive measures.
"He who is not for us is against us"
In the Soviet Union I was working on the manuscript of a book to be called "Real Socialism" that tried to formulate Soviet reality in the language of a particular individual-myself-rather than in officially approved Soviet language. Even though the book contained no calls for revolt, I knew I could never get it published in Russia because of the official attitude that "he who is not for us is against us." I left the country for the sake of that book and or other books I intend to write.
Copyright @ US News & World Report
With some my statements I am still in agreement. The book was never published. Maybe one day I'll finish it in more interesting forms. I keep notes on Socialist Realism as a main style of American culture. Oh, there is more socialism in America than Russia ever experienced. And it's invisible because American communism exists in cultural, not state formations.
Now, back to our subject!
I prefer "playscript" and not "play" or "text" -- there are many "texts" on stage without words. Analysis, my friends, isn't critique or criticism. Analysis is about your mental readiness. You don't have to understand everything, but you better to learn how to get something which you can't get. Analysis is never first, you try to understand when you're lost.
My students do not like words "problem" or "trouble" -- I like the dramatic, I want to identify my future dangers.
Anton Chekhov
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