User:Kober/sandbox/Theatre of Georgia

The theatre of Georgia combines its European basis with Georgian folk performing art tradition. It has had an uninterrupted history from the mid-19th century and evolved from the Russian- and Western European influenced stage to a distinct Georgian one under the guidance of the early 20th-century directors Kote Marjanishvili and Sandro Akhmeteli. It has been heavily interlaced with Georgian literature, film, television, and music. The modern Georgian stage is dominated by realism, although many other forms, especially experimental, are frequently performed. The two most influential Georgian theatre companies are those of the Rustaveli and the Marjanishvili. The former enjoyed steady popularity in the former Soviet Union, toured beyond the "Iron Curtain" several times, and has won a positive coverage in the Western press.

Origins

The earliest theatre space in Georgia, unearthed at the ancient rock-hewn town of Uplistsikhe, dates back to the 3rd century BC. Pagan traits can be observed in the traditional medieval folk theatre art known as sakhioba which survived in Georgia into the 19th century. Another major component of folk theatre were peripatetic masquerade performances such as berikaoba, manifestly of a sexual character, and qeenoba, satirizing the foreign hegemony and officialdom. Centuries of civil unrest and foreign invasions led to a general decline of the medieval Georgian culture and it was not until the 1780s that the first modern-type classical theatre was founded at the court of King Erekle II in Tbilisi. The company, as well as its audience, was mostly local aristocracy. The theatre was directed by Prince Giorgi Avalishvili, also credited with writing the first original Georgian drama, of which only the author's prologue survives. The repertoire was native as well as adopted and translated from Russian. The theatre and its troupe were destroyed in the Persian invasion of 1795. A significant hiatus of more than a half century followed.

Birth of modern theatre

In the mid-19th century, the liberal policies of the Russian viceroy Mikhail Vorontsov allowed a relative revival of cultural activity in Georgia. In 1845, a Russian drama theatre was organized in Tbilisi. Five years later, in 1850, Prince Giorgi Eristavi exploited his position in the Vorontsov administration and single-handedly created and directed a Georgian theatre for which he wrote its first actable comedies. However, he was unable to secure neither sufficient finances and sizeable audience nor the support from the government — often the subject of attack in his plays — and the theatre gradually went downhill. In 1879, a second company, which would ultimately become known as the Rustaveli, was founded in Tbilisi, largely through the efforts of Ilia Chavchavadze and Akaki Tsereteli, two leading Georgian intellectuals of that time.[325] The theatre quickly garnered a large audience and performed a diverse repertoire, from vaudevilles to Georgian comedies, from plays by Schiller to Monti's tragedies. The theatre was strongly dominated by a realistic tradition, but romantic plays were also staged.

Evolution of national theatre

In 1918, Georgia became independent, and the new government launched a program aimed at reviving the national theater. This cultural program outlived the republic and reforms continued under the Soviet rule established in Georgia in 1921. It was when the two energetic Georgian theatre figures, Kote Marjanishvili and Sandro Akhmeteli, set to revolutionize the Georgian stage. Marjanishvili had worked as a theatre director in Moscow and had already gained fame for his collaboration with Stanislavski, Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Gordon Craig. He maintained that the Georgian theatre had to begin its new life by mastering European Realism.

Akhmeteli, a bold theatre critic and now also a director, accused his older contemporaries of failing to express Georgian traditions, forms and rhythms. He was determined to give the theatre a clearly national color rather than to simply adjust it to a general European standard. The two men collaborated with respect and unease to reform the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi, but the clash of their ideas and Akhemeteli's volatile character led to Marjanishvili’s departure from the company in 1926. He was followed by leading actors such as Ushangi Chkheidze, Tamara Chavchavadze, Veriko Anjaparidze and Shalva Gambashidze, while two other stars — Akaki Khorava and Akaki Vasadze — remained with Akhmeteli, who was now in sole control of the Rustaveli. Marjanishvili formed a provincial touring theatre, centered on Kutaisi and Batumi, which was later established in Tbilisi as the country’s second leading company and would eventually be named the Marjanishvili after its leader’s death in 1933.

Under Stalin's increasingly repressive rule, Marjanishvili chose more "ideologically correct" repertoire for his theatre, which is still functional and continues Marjanishvili’s eclectic and more conformist line. Akhmeteli’s innovations culminated in his 1930 production Lamara, a play be Grigol Robakidze, which won a prize at the Moscow Drama Olympiad, and continued to be staged, although without the name of the playwright on the posters, to prove the achievements of Soviet theatrical art even after Robakidze’s defection to Germany later that year. The Rustaveli Theatre then received an invitation to tour the United States and won rare reviews in the Western press. Akhmeteli’s experiments with new stage techniques would last barely ten years before he was shot in 1937 by his long-time enemy Lavrentiy Beria, but he proved to be a significant influence on Georgian theater in specific and Soviet theater in general. In that wave of Soviet repressions, several members of Akhmeteli’s troupe were also purged as were the Moscow-based Georgian director Sergo Amaghlobeli, the director and critic Vakhtang Garrick, the leading Georgian Jewish playwright Gerzel Baazov, and the theatre designer Petre Otskheli, known for his massive stage decorations for the Marjanishvili company.

During the late 1930s and beyond, the harassed Georgian theatre performed a standard repertoire focusing on typical Soviet heroes – workers, peasants, and the new Soviet intelligentsia. Among a few notable performances of that time were plays by Polikarpe Kakabadze, whose 1928 comedy Qvarqvare Tutaberi remains one of the most popular comedies in Georgian repertoire. Major theaters were unable to regularly operate during World War II. Instead, the theatre collectives united in "front groups" which performed for army units on the front lines.

After the war, the two major Tbilisi theaters began mounting larger-scale productions once again. Ideologically more favored historical and patriotic plays as well as Shakespeare and Schiller, whom the Georgian theatres found close to the romantic Georgian spirit, were regularly staged. During the 1960s, many younger directors such as Giga Lordkipanidze and Robert Sturua attempted at experiments within realism, denouncing heroic and romantic forms as anachronistic. However, the lack of audience interest as well as official orthodoxy rendered these experimentations abortive and, by the early 1970s, a Georgian version of realism was once again the dominant form. Around the same time, native Georgian repertoire began to be staged more actively, a movement spearheaded by the critic Beso Zghenti. It was also the period of Brecht’s triumph on the Georgian stage, culminating in Sturua’s Der kaukaische Kreidekreis (The Caucasian Chalk Circle) in 1975. The Brechtian aesthetics dominated Sturua’s production of the plays by Kakabadze and Shakespeare at the Rustaveli, which, at that time, emerged as the unchallenged leader among Georgian companies and enjoyed a considerable success abroad.

With the downfall of the Soviet Union, censorship in theater was eliminated and experimentation began to flourish. But as political tensions escalated in 1991, theatre collectives faced decreased state support on one hand and attacks in the press on the other. The Georgian theaters maintained themselves into the chaotic years of the civil war, staging several new productions in the 1990s.[329]

Eteri Gougoushvili, "Theatre of Georgia", in Don Rubin, Peter Nagy, Philippe Rouyer (1994), The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre. Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0415059283