A Petrushka ReimaginedThis is probably not the Petrushka that you are expecting.
For anyone familiar with this celebrated, recommissioned piece from the legendary Ballets Russes’
repertoire, this production of Petrushka, conceived by choreographer Ella Rothschild for the OBV,
departs extensively from the original storyline and setting, and creates an entirely new interpretation for
Igor Stravinsky’s iconic ballet score. Where the original ballet envisioned a puppet coming to life,
struggling with its volatile human emotions on the backdrop of a distracted society, here it is society whostruggles with its corrupted humanity, puppeteered through its impaired morality to face the fragility of
its own mortality.
This text will attempt to recount some background of the original Petrushka production and its plot anddelineate the corresponding features alongside the major transformations that Rohtschild’s version
proposes as a new, petrifying vision, for this tempestuous milestone in 20th century music.
The original production
Premiered on June 13th, 1911 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Petrushka was the second of threecommissioned ballet scores, between The Firebird (1910) and The Rite of Spring (1913), that Stravinsky
created for the Ballets Russes before WW1.
Following the overwhelming success of The Firebird - which granted Stravinsky overnight internationalrecognition - Sergei Diaghlev, the Ballet Russes’ renowned impresario, requested the composer topropose a new work for the company’s upcoming season. Initially Stravinsky suggested a piece based ona dream he had of a pagan sacrificial ritual to the gods of spring. However, stalled by the complexity ofdeveloping this ambitious composition, when the impresario visited him in Switzerland in autumn 2010Stravinsky instead played parts of a different piano concerto that he had recently begun to conceive. He
titled it “The Cry of Petrushka”, having in mind an image of a puppet coming to life. Diaghilev, intriguedby its potential, asked Stravinsky to develop it into his next ballet score. He then engaged Alexandre
Benois to devise the script with Stravinsky as well as design the stage and costumes. The writing of themusical score developed as the storyline formulated between the two. When the script matured, MichelFokine was handed the choreography. Rehearsals began in spring 1911 and up until the very last dress
rehearsal alterations were made to the plot and its staging.
Unlike The Firebird and The Rite of Spring which were situated dramatically in an imagined mythical orpagan world, Petrushka takes place in a very specific setting - the colorful Shrovetide Fair in St.
Petersburg, a popular event in the city’s mid 19th century urban life and its leisure culture. BothStravinsky and Benois had vivid nostalgic memories of visiting it as children, and recreated it, together
with Fokine, as a locus of cultural fusion that captured conflicting aspects of Russian modernity (localfolklore with avant garde; realism together with symbolism) while envisioning its outer exuberance andinner torment.

The first halves of scenes one and four of the original ballet go to great extent to depict the fair’s
attractions and its partakers. The production’s scenario, musical score, choreography and design alike,put much nuance in portraying the faircomers as a group of individuals representing different parts ofsociety that are all intertwined together at the fair, consuming or activating its diverse entertainment.
We meet a mixture of rustic and higher classed carnival comers: street peddlers and drunks, coachmen,
soldiers, officers, wet nurses, gypsies, dancers, acrobats, musicians and more. In the crowded spacebustling with many simultaneous miniature plots and details, each group or individual is momentarily
focused upon within the overall commotion, portraying a multifarious tableau of this society.
Stavinsky’s stratification method accentuates this dynamic and heterogeneous world by rapidly
juxtaposing and overlapping musical references from a variety of sources pertaining mainly to high andlow russian music along with some influences from the west. Collaged together, they create animmensely vigorous and rhythmically changing score that captures the fair’s hustle and bustle. Later on,
this will dissolve into creating the pathos and erratic inner world of the dolls that have come to life,
famously incorporating bitonality to portray Petrushka’s unstable duality as a puppet bearing humanemotions and his inner struggle.
After establishing in detail the excitement and disarray of life at the fair - in comes the fairy tale aspect ofthe plot. The first scene continues when a Magician, referred to at times as a Charlatan, appears on site,enchanting the crowd who gathers round him with his flute. He then opens the curtains of a theater
exposing three life size puppets: Petrushka, a Ballerina and a Moor who come alive to the gesture of his
flute turned wand. The dolls dance in front of the delighted crowd while the magician instigates a rivalry
between Petrushka and the Moor for the attention of the Ballerina. The second scene continues withPetrushka in his camber frustrated by his confinement and his lonesome awkwardness. He then pursues
to court the Ballerina who is pushed inside his cell by the Magician, disheartened by her rejection. The
third scene takes place in the chamber of the Moor (depicted originally as somewhat of a racist
caricature, in blackface, playing with a coconut) where the Ballerina is brought in to, again by theMagician. Here the courtship is successful (introduced musically by a viennese waltz) and when
Petrushka bursts in, trying to prevent this affair, he is chased and beaten by the Moor.
Back to the fairground in the fourth scene, the carnival continues in full commotion unaware of the dolls’
behind the scenes drama and climaxes in a masquerade where a devil makes an appearance. Suddenly
the dolls rush on site continuing the chase that results with the Moor killing Petrushka. The astonished
crowd who witnesses the murder demands an explanation from the Charlatan. He pulls out a puppet ofPetrushka showing them that it was all mere fabrication. As The Charlatan is left alone in the nocturnal
fairground the figure of the reanimated Petrushka reappears above the puppet theater, menacing theCharlatan from afar only to collapse to his second death - putting to doubt the question of what is real
and what not.
The original plot puts at its center a world where the real and the imaginary overlap - the world ofhumans and that of the dolls. The Petrushka doll, a local Russian version of the commedia dell'arte’sPulcinella figure, was a common hand puppet in popular street theaters such as at the Shrovetide fair.

Though they were familiar with its origins, the Stavinsky-Benois script highly detours from the puppet’s
traditional characterization as a vile, murderous trickster, and rather exceptionally portray him as a loney,awkward, doll, eventually being the victim in the story instead of the perpetrator.
The concept of a doll coming to life was prominent in 19th century ballet and opera all over Europe, fromCoppelia to the Nutcracker. Nonetheless, in most of these plots there is a clear separation (by dream ortrickery) between the human world and that of the puppets. Petrushka offers a more ambiguous
overlapping of these worlds and brings to question more significantly the mere possibility for clear
distinction between what is real and what is imagined, bringing together society and the phantoms (orpuppet) that haunt it.
In this new version of Petrushka the notion of the puppet takes on a variety of different interpretations,appearing in both material and metaphorical ways. With a completely different setting and plot line, thetormented struggle with human emotion, portrayed originally by Petrushka, is no longer reserved for thedoll, but rather an omnipresence.
Reimagining Petrushka
The first striking difference between the original production of Petrushka and the current one, appearswith the opening of the curtains. Whereas the original production and Benois' lavish decor and costumes
celebrate in colorful detail the vibrant Shrovetide fairground, with its specific russian 19th century urban
backdrop, Rothschild’s vision (with stage designer Eva Veronica Born) sets her plot in a vast colorlesswilderness with no urban, carnival or for that matter any societal feature at sight. It is now a desolate,arid landscape that bears no tangible reference to a specific time, place or culture, thus suggesting thisinitially predominantly Russian tale as an ubiquitous allegory.
The festive carnival goers of the original piece have turned here into an intoxicated, violent mob. No
longer the delighted mass, consuming their distractions at the fair, but rather one that finds its
amusement brawling in crude mayhem. We are thrust into their grotesque altercation as it is alreadyunfolding, without reason as to how it was instigated, as though this is the constant state of affairs in thisimagined world. The Crowd seems as from a declined society, once, perhaps heterogeneous and civilized
but now wallowing in brutality. Where the original scenario, choreography and costumes made detailedemphasis on the variety of the fair comers based on a signification of their class or occupation, here
their societal background is implied by the variety of dark outfits (by Teresa Vergho), their silhouettes
alluding to a status they might have once had, but which is now equally tattered as they all uniformly
take part as perpetrators in the gruesome rampage.
In the first part of the opening scene, Rothschild works in distinct contradiction to Stravinsky’s everchanging musical composition. Whereas Fokine used the rapid rhythmic transformations to accentuate
the distinct groups or individuals one at a time in accordance to the changing score, here Rothschild ties
the occurrences and figures together, closely intertwining them in a defying continuous slow motion.
Playing against the music, the choreography translates the intense collisions of the musical collage

narratively rather than rhythmically, while the rhythmic gap between them creates a grotesque effect on
the entangled violent chaos portrayed on stage.
As the drum roll appears in the middle of the first scene announcing originally the arrival of The
Charlatan, this here marks the end of the prolonged altercation that results in one individual from The
Crowd - The Mortal - collapsing on the ground. The Crowd now syncs to the score, shifting into an
entranced unison, as though activated by an invisible hand. Moving in unity, as though lacking personalwill, they portray a set of suppressed, fabricated emotions. A sense of horror and sorrow emerges within
them, at first somewhat artificially but gradually dissolving into a manifestation of possible cumbersomeremorse.
As in the 1911 production, here too scenes two and three are the more intimate parts of the plot.
Nonetheless, unlike in the original ballet where they take place in the interior chambers of the puppets,
as to portray their inner life, here we are left in the same barren landscape where the plot continues.
There is no spatial distinction between “inner” and “outer” worlds and the idea of the puppet takes on
new forms where different kinds of puppets appear alongside their puppeteers, unraveling the binding
relations between them.
In the second scene, we remain with the almost lifeless Mortal and a small group from The Crowd. At thesight of this individual’s near demise, a latent sentiment of empathy emerges within the group now
turned into caregivers, as they nurse him as solicitous puppeteers, struggling to keep him alive. Placing
the scene on the score that was originally Petrushka’s solo in his room, Stravinksy’s bitonality for thepuppet’s theme no longer portrays the ambiguous traits and inner conflicts of the doll grappling with its
human emotions, but rather a struggle between the will to hold on to life and the inevitable surrender toits expiration. And it is only when faced with the frailty of mortality, that the possibility of a morecompassionate human interaction is introduced.
In Rothschild’s storyline, scene three is where the appearance of the puppet takes on a palpable form
when a lifesize puppet Donkey (fabricated by Jan Maillard) enters the space, operated by eight dancers.
The image of the donkey does not stem from the original Petrushka (not even from the fourth scene’smasquerade), but complies with Rothschild’s usage of animal puppets in her earlier work as figures thatabsurdly expose human vulnerability.
The donkey has a mixture of qualities attributed to it. Though known for its steadiness and loyalty, it ismostly regarded in popular culture as an un-esteemed animal lacking grace or wit, and is often abused. It
was nonetheless a source of worship in ancient cultures, as well as a symbol of peace, and referred to in
the scriptures, both in Judaism and christianity, as the chosen animal to carry the prophet. Here, The
Donkey’s appearance is navigated through the oriental score that Stravinsky originally assumed for The
Moor. He is wandering in the barren space, infusing it with a preposterous dreamlike aura. Clumsy andunpretentious, it portrays an eerie reminiscence of plain innocence which later literally disassembles toits core at the harsh sight of The Mortal’s body grasping with his last breaths. The puppet’s mysterious
presence can be seen as a mediator to an afterlife or as marking a shift into a mythical world which willensue.
The fourth scene takes on a gloomy form, as The Crowd re-enters the space defeated, in a dance
macabre of sorts. The Mortal is among them. The somber atmosphere stands in sharp contrast to thelively score which originally took us back to the bustling carnival scene. From within this new state ofbeing the mythical and the physical worlds merge, and sorrow and grief shape into a new and peculiar
rite of worship where The Donkey is given a sacrificial role through which The Crowd regroups. This leads
to a collective reenactment of trauma, commemorating the Mortal and thus recognizing their own
mortality, in a memento mori of sorts.
In some sense Rothschild’s interpretation draws a connection between Petrushka and Stravinsky’s
following ballet score - The Rite of Spring. It proposes a reversed line where a distracted, unleashedcivilization is pulled back to its violent pagan roots. The turbulent Petrushka score, with its pronounced
clash between musical cultures, is realized here as a vision of humanity struck by the consequences of its
inherent primordial brutality.
In the original production of Petrushka the end of the plot was unresolved until the very last dress
rehearsal when Fokine came up with the idea of Petrushka’s pantomime after his reappearance on thetheater’s rooftop, haunting the Charlatan in the emptied fairground, then collapsing to his second
death. In Rothschild’s variation, death likewise reappears in the end of the closing scene where the last
moments of The Mortal are collectively replicated and replayed by the now more docile Crowd. Here thereturn of the repressed appears more as a ceremonial summoning, a shared performance of death. Will
we be able to find compassion and heal after all what we have done to each other?