Maria Shevtsova: Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance

London and New York: Routledge, 2004
ISBN 0-415-33461-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-33462-4 (pbk)
231 pp + xiv

This is the first ever full-length study of internationally acclaimed theatre company, the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg, and its director, Lev Dodin. Shevtsova’s illuminating account of Dodin’s directorial processes and the company’s actor training, devising and rehearsal methods, is interwoven with her detailed analysis of the Maly’s main productions. All this is set in the sociocultural and political context of the last years of the Soviet Union, its collapse and regeneration as present-day Russia. The book provides both a valuable methodological model for actor training and a unique insight into the journeys taken from studio to stage, including a day-to-day log of rehearsals leading to the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades at the Amsterdam opera house.

‘A moving and inspiring account … I can think of no more important book for the theatre at the beginning of the uncertain century.’
From renowned actor Simon Callow’s Foreword to the book.

Director Katie Mitchell has selected Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance for the Guardian Best Books of the Year 2004.

Reviews

‘Admiring but not uncritical, Maria Shevtsova has tracked Dodin’s creativity, for many years attending rehearsals, interviewing actors, and observing how performances change over the years. Yet, for all the engrossing detail, she wisely chooses not to be exhaustive. In each case, she selects those elements most pertinent to a given production and concentrates on them, moving from the general to the specific and back again. Her handling of Dodin’s reception by the critics is exemplary, not merely quoting, but explaining the cultural données  that inform the reviews…Shevtsova excels many who write about the theatrical experience, because she recognizes not only how subjective any description has to be, but also how a production shifts, grows and alters over the course of its lifetime. No prose can fully replicate the theatrical experience; but Shevtsova’s enthusiastic acumen makes us feel what we have missed if we did not see these extraordinary artistic events…Shevtsova’s illumination of a theatre that is both highly intelligent and viscerally exciting reflects back on her book, which at once stimulates the mind and the emotions.’ - Laurence Senelick, Theatre Research International

‘This is a significant book on an immensely important and influential theatre company of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: it provides vital and inspiring reading for Russian scholars as well as for the theatre studies readership in general.’ - Bella Merlin, New Theatre Quarterly

‘To delineate [the Maly’s] journey almost necessitates a parallel sketch of the shifting political landscape in the Soviet Union and Russia, and …Shevtsova manages this contextualisation adeptly and illuminatingly… Whilst there is a strong sense of a specific historical and cultural context to these moments, Shevtsova does also manage to recognise the international perspective to the Maly, offering comparisons of reviews from a range of countries who have played host to the company’s repertoire and drawing out specific and contrasting reading from these sources…Extensive detail and rigorous research characterises this book and there is plenty for the student of Russian theatre or the practitioner-researcher to be grateful for in its three sections.’ - Jonathan Pitches, Contemporary Theatre Review

‘I really enjoyed this very readable book by a respected scholar.  It is sufficiently comprehensive to convey a full impression of Dodin’s work to readers who have not seen productions.  Maria Shevtsova skilfully allows her account of the Maly productions to reveal the provocative way in which Dodin’s work comments on his society and unfolding political events and the way in which his artistic brilliance makes remarkable theatre for spectators everywhere.’ - Peta Tait, Modern Drama

‘Although it is notoriously difficult to capture in the written word the ephemeral art of dramatic performance, and though Dodin’s actor-centred theatre, which merges inner psychological depth with often daring and exuberant theatricality – fusing the ideas of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold – presents a particular challenge, it is one Shevtsova meets.  Her accounts are vivid, detailed, and evocative, and augmented by the inclusion of some twenty black and white photos.  Her motivation, however, is to analyse how and why the productions were created.  Discourse on theatre often relies excessively on newspaper reviews and other secondary sources, but Shevtsova’s research is largely first hand, and the great strength of this book is her access to rehearsals and to Maly Theatre personnel.  For Dodin, just as training does not finish in the classroom, a production does not end on a first night but can be modified as it matures.  This is reflected in Shevtsova’s writing; discussion of some productions is interwoven with her observations of the rehearsal process and the results in public performance.’ - Ros Dixon, Modern Language Review

‘This is an important and necessary book, rendered all the more so for Shevtsova’s great skill in evoking and analysing performance.  All credit to Routledge for seeing its worth.’ – Edward Braun, Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol