Great Theatre Artists Unafraid
The ancient Romans believed that one of the greatest societal ills was the impulse to leave your native territory. To them, new horizons meant new conflicts and new temptations. We can see how well they held to that principle, but on the flip side we can also see how well they proved their concerns valid.
For artists, the conflict is also real. When should the artist be protected from outside influence? How long is the incubation period for a new work to be developed in privacy before being exposed to comparison and critique? Can great work genuinely develop without accountability to standards beyond the artist’s internal dialogue?
In 2005, I had the great privilege of bringing the National Academic Dramatic Theatre named for Yakub Kolas to the United States to be the first professional theatre company from the Republic of Belarus to perform here. The process of encountering their company, working with them, and developing that project had a profound effect on my personal growth and the development of my artistic ideals. Along the way, and when everything was said and done, I gained insight into questions that I was only beginning to learn to ask.
Sometime after graduating from college and working in community theatre in southwest Michigan for a couple of years, I got it in my head that if I was going to take the medium seriously, I had to extend myself and see how I could fare in an international gathering.
In 2000, I produced and performed in a two-person show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Let’s just say that was a logistical success. But I hit it off with the company that ran the venue I’d rented, Rocket Venues, and for the following three years I worked for Rocket in a variety of capacities. As a venue manager, I had the responsibility of coordinating dozens of productions from across the world, including several cross-border collaborative efforts.
My first meeting with the Yakub Kolas Theatre’s touring company was inauspicious. In my first year as a Rocket Venues staff member in 2001, I was the manager of a venue with two spaces adapted from the facilities of an educational center. The Yakub Kolas Theatre had performed “Chagall… Chagall…” at the Fringe through Rocket the prior year, and I was to host their return to the festival with “Chagall” and a new production. The company was accustomed to performing these productions with a central entrance at the back of the stage. On our proscenium stage, built out of scaffolding in a basketball court, however, the back of the stage was a solid curtain. Without discussing the matter with their hosts (namely, me), one member of the company pulled out the scissors. Did I mention it was an inauspicious first encounter?
Once that flap was over, I had little desire to work much with the testy Belarusians. But after about five days of seeing the reactions of audience members as they exited the theatre, I had to give them a chance. I’ll let this line from the Scotsman’s review of “Chagall” speak for me:
“Everything about this glowing 70-minute tribute to Chagall and his city is simply perfect, with a quality of acting that takes the breath away, and a courtly simplicity that recalls so many lost worlds of piety and reverence. What was that about the ceremony of innocence being drowned? Not here; and not for the magical hour-and-a-quarter that this show lasts.”
Have you ever seen something so fresh that it hit you and woke you up like the first bracing November wind, but so deeply rooted in the shared human experience that it’s like touching an centuries-old object and feeling connected the generations of people who had touched it before you? That’s what it was like to see their work. It didn’t take long for our prior conflict to melt away.
Working on an MFA in Theatre Management at Florida State at the time, I was required to complete my degree with a year of internship. I was so inspired by the Yakub Kolas’ performance that I thought “Why not Vitsyebsk?” On the flip side, I noted that the company, besides Edinburgh and London, had also performed in Germany, Italy, throughout the countries of the old Warsaw Pact, and even at the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, leading to the second question, “Why not America?”
So, after working my third Fringe with Rocket in the summer of 2003, I traveled directly from Scotland, through Poland (where I stayed in the apartment of an original member of Kantor’s Cricot-2 company), to arrive in Belarus, where I lived for eight months. My mission? Immerse myself in the work of the company and arrange their first visit to the United States.
High ideals encountered reality not long after. From the beginning, I operated under the assumption that the production central to the tour would be “Chagall”, given its established international success and the publicity. Another production would be included, but utilizing the same cast so as to keep costs and logistics under control.
Now, the trouble with that, of course, is that the Yakub Kolas is an enormous company, with dozens upon dozens of actors and crew who hadn’t had the opportunity to perform abroad. While I worked earnestly to develop friendships and working relationships with everyone in the company, it was difficult when some of the company members and staff asked me directly if they would perform on the tour and I had to find an elegant way to say “No.” I would respond that the intention of the initial tour was to gain a foothold of recognition for the company in the U.S. to build relationships and create long-term opportunities. Which was what I wanted, but didn’t do much to impress. I could feel the Romans laughing.
With that goal, however, came the challenges on the American side. After months of probing, earnest letter-writing, pricey international phone calls, learning about Belarusian history, and plenty of Googling, I found two groups of people interested in seeing a Belarusian theatre company perform in their native language in the United States: Slavic language scholars from Harvard University and members of the Belarusian Diaspora. Enthusiasm? Sure. Money and logistical support? Not so much.
So if there were one aspect of the process that disappointed me the most, it’s the stony silence that I encountered when trying to drum up interest (and support) in the American theatre community. Having worked now for an actual paycheck in the industry for several years since then, I wish I could go back and tell myself how things work. Everybody in our industry has their own projects and visions. Organizations have certain set priorities and limited resources. When outsiders come along with some big idea they think you should put into action immediately, it can be exhausting, or irritating, and most likely both.
But honesty, encouragement, and compassion should also be the order of the day when dealing with colleagues, even when we have to say “no”. I contacted a large Boston-area theatre over a year in advance of the planned project date to inquire renting a new space they were bringing online, and they responded that it was a possibility. After ten months of trying to keep an active dialogue, the directors finally offered a useless date that left me struggling to find another space at the very last minute. “No” after one month would have been much more productive for everyone than ten months of false hope.
The final execution of the tour would be another, well, logistical success. The company traveled and performed for the Harvard University community and in Brooklyn without major incident. I wish I’d had the professional standing and address book to help them make the longer-term impact that I’d hoped for with American audiences or theatre professionals.
But I don’t regret having undertaken the project. It was the greatest challenge I’d ever faced, I did a lot with a little, and I believe that it gave me experience and insights that have put me in the position I’m in today. I also made some of the dearest friends I’ve ever had. The people I worked with, even when disappointed, were warm, giving, and utterly unpretentious. I think the mark of a great artist is someone who can leave their work on the stage. The actors I met could produce brilliant, cutting-edge productions, but after the show would sit back and discuss their gardening.
And while I hope that the Yakub Kolas company finds more recognition and opportunities to share their work with an American audience in the future, I’m also glad, in some strange ways, that they maintain some level of isolation to continue working in an incubator where they develop a unique style and identity – great theatre artists unafraid to also be Belarusian. And from a selfish perspective, they’re like a personal gem that only I and a few other American practitioners know and love. 2011
Written exclusively for “The Soul of the American Actor.” Printed with the permission of the author.
JAMES MALLINSON Operations Manager of the HB Studio. Mr. Mallinson arranged the first visit to America by the National Academic Dramatic Theatre named for Yakub Kolas from Vitsyebsk, Belarus. He also presented at the Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala, and worked for multi-disciplinary presenting organizations including Chicago Humanities Festival, Pick-Staiger Concert Hall (Northwestern University), and the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. He is a graduate of the Florida State, and worked with Rocket Venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a presenter, venue manager, and marketing director. He will be returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer as Production Manager for New York’s Russian Arts Theatre & Studio’s production of “Wonder Bread.”.
