page_title: Nikolai Evreinov
section_title: Works and theories
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolai Evreinov / Works and theories
caption_attribution_description: Title page of Nikolai Evreinov's Pro Scena Sua (1915)
context_page_description: Nikolai Nikolayevich Evreinov was a Russian director, dramatist and theatre practitioner associated with Russian Symbolism.
context_section_description: Evreinov argued that the role of theatre was to ape and mimick nature. In his estimation, theatre is everything around us. He pointed out that nature is full of theatrical conventions: desert flowers mimicking the stones; mouse feigning death in order to escape a cat's claws; complicated dances of birds, etc. He viewed theatre as a universal symbol of existence.
  Apology for Theatricality is his most famous essay. It was published in 1908. Here Evreinov promoted an underlying aesthetic:
  "To make a theatre of life is the duty of every artist. ... the stage must not borrow so much from life as life borrows from the stage."
  The director sought to reinvigorate the theatre (and through it life itself) through the rediscovery of the origin of theatre in play. He was influenced by the philosophies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Bergson, and, like Meyerhold, the aesthetics of symbolism and the commedia dell'arte (particularly in its use of mask and spontaneity). Evreinov developed his theatrical theories in An Introduction to Monodrama (1909), The Theatre as Such (1912), The Theatre for Oneself, and Pro Scena Sua (1915).
  His plays include the monodramas The Presentation of Love (1910) and In the Stage-Wings of the Soul (1911), the tragi-farce  A Merry Death (1908, based on Alexander Blok's The Puppet Show), and The Chief Thing (1921); the last two of which were heavily indebted to the commedia. Based on Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths (1902), The Chief Thing provided Evreinov's one international success, was done on stage and screen in France as La Comedie du Bonheur and was staged on Broadway in 1926 by Theater Guild with Harold Clurman and Edward G. Robinson. His Ship of the Righteous  was a great success in Poland.  According to Spencer Golub, The Chief Thing play provides a "compendium of Evreinovian aesthetics and devices" and features Harlequin "as death-defier and life-transformer".
caption: Title page from Evreinov's Pro Scena Sua (1915), showing a commedia Harlequin
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