Theatre, Globalization and the Cold War

The spread of communism constitutes one of the most significant global phenomena of the 20th century. Marked at turns by military expansion, political annexation and, during the course of the Cold War (roughly 1945-1991), also by large-scale ideological warfare, both clandestine and overt, this conflict had a cultural-political dimension conducted by various countries utilising all available media. In the great Cold War struggle, Eastern bloc countries appeared to have the more potent cultural weapons. Socialist policy advocated generous state support of the arts, maintained subsidized institutions and boasted powerful ambassadors. In the realm of theatre the Soviet Union could marshal the most influential acting theorist of the 20th century, Stanislavsky, as well as one of the admired theatrical institutions, The Moscow Art Theatre complete with model productions of Chekhov (arguably one of two or three most important dramatists of the century and fortuitously reconcilable with Socialist Realism). East Germany fielded Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble, Poland had Jerzy Grotowski, who, although hardly an outright Marxist, remained a card-carrying member of the Polish Communist party and whose work was hardly conceivable without the state subsidies that enabled him to work in his laboratory free of commercial pressures.

The battle for “hearts and minds” was conducted equally, if not perhaps even more, intensely in the so-called ‘non-aligned countries’ where East and West could be played off against each other and official politics were not necessarily congruent with cultural activities on the ground. Here the list included numerous countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Wars of liberation and liberation theatre often went hand in hand.

The conference will focus on the role played by theatre and all forms of theatrical performance (circus, dance, opera etc.) during the Cold War. Its purpose is to map, characterize and theorize the theatrical traffic engendered by the spread of communism especially after the Second World War until the end of the Cold War.

The overall focus will be on interconnections between countries and regions rather than on specific manifestations of communist/socialist ideological formations within individual nation-states.

Thursday, 17th of May

20.00
Welcome
Christopher Balme & Berenika Szymanski (LMU Munich)

20.15
Keynote
Charlotte Canning (University of Texas at Austin)
The Cold War Battle Ground of Catfish Row Versus the Nevsky Prospekt: A US Production of Porgy and Bess in the Soviet Union

21.15
Get Together

Friday, 18th of May

THE BEGINNINGS

9.30 – 10.00
Christopher Silsby (City University of New York)
Spirituals, Serfs, and Soviets: Paul Robeson and Race Policy in Soviet Union at the Start of the Cold War

10.00 – 10.30
Kyrill Kunakhovich (Princeton University)
Staging Socialism: The Political Function of Theaters in Krakow and Leipzig, 1945 – 1970

10.30 – 11.00
Coffee Break

INSTITUTIONS

11.00 – 11.30
Hanna Korsberg (University of Helsinki)
Creating an International Community in Theatre during the Cold War

11.30 – 12.00
Anja Klöck (University of Music and Theatre Leipzig)
Acting on the Cold War: Imperialist Strategies, Stanislavsky and Brecht in German Actor Training after 1945

12.00 – 12.30
Václav Smidrkal (Charles University Prague)
The Artistic Ensembles of the Socialist Armed Forces: Combat Units for the Ideological Front?

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

SECRET SERVICE

14.00 – 14.30
Berenika Szymanski (LMU Munich)
The Case “Mazowsze”

14.30 – 15.00
James Smith (University of Oxford)
Anti-Communism, Government Surveillance, and the British Cold War Theatre Industry.

15.00 – 15.30
Zoltán Imre (Eötvös University, Budapest)
Midsummer Night’s Censors – The Visit of the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Eastern-Bloc around 1972 and its Consequences

15.30 – 16.00
Coffee Break

BRECHT
16.00 – 16.30
David Barnett (University of Sussex)
The Politics of an International Reputation. The Berliner Ensemble as a GDR Theatre on Tour

16.30 – 17.00
Pirkko Koski (University of Helsinki)
Challenging with Brecht

Saturday, 19th of May

ASIAN AREA

9.00 – 9.30
Anna Stecher (LMU Munich)
Chinese Exercises in Socialist Realism – The Stage Works of Jiao Juyin

9.30 – 10.00
Mark Gamsa (Tel Aviv University/University of Latvia)
Sergei Tret’iakov’s Roar China, in Moscow and in China

10.00 – 10.30
Basilio Esteban S. Villaruz (University of the Philippines) & meLê Yamomo (LMU Munich) Performing Diplomacy: Dance and Theatre in the Philippines in the Period of the Cold War

10.30 – 11.00
Coffee Break

THIRD WORLD PERSPECTIVE

11.00 – 11.30
Anirban Ghosh (LMU Munich)
STAGING THE SOVIET – Circus and other Histories

11.30 – 12-00
Christine Matzke (University of Bayreuth)
Whose Side Are You On? Cold War Trajectories in Eritrean and Ethiopian Theatre Practice, 1970s to 1991

12.00 – 12.30
Rikard Hoogland (Stockholm University)
Different Valuations in a Political Context. The World Premiere of Peter Weiss' Gesang vom Lusitanischen Popanz in Stockholm 1967

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

ON TOUR

14.00 – 14.30
Ioana Szeman (University of Roehampton, London)
United in Division? Touring Performances, Nationalism and the Cold War

14.30 – 15.00 Karolina Prykowska Michalak (University of Lodz)
Tadeusz Kantor – Artist during the Cold War

15.00 – 15.30
Joshua Williams (UC Berkeley)
COLD WAR CLOWNS. Peter Brook, Teatro Campesino & the Crypto-Radicalism of the Western Left, 1970 – 1976

15.30 – 16.00
Coffee Break

BATTLEFIELDS

16.00 – 16.30
Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Theatre as a Cold War Battlefield in Post-Dictatorship Greece, 1974 – 1981

16.30 – 17.00
Sebastian Stauss (LMU Munich)
Checkpoint Music Drama

17.00
Wrap Up