Query: Komissarzhevskaya

title: Komissarzhevskaya and the Russian Avant Garde: pragmatics of performativity: Meyerhold and beyond
abstract: Starting from 1906 Komissarzhevskaya proceeded to explore new creative perspectives with her theatre moving it to a new locale, and then inviting no one other than a young 'acting director' Vsevolod Meyerhold. He will become her new provocatively experimental 'director of company' The theatrical aesthetics of Symbolism was then (still) highly relevant not only to her but also to him. Meyerhold served as director of Komissarzhevskaya's Theatre for approximately a year and a half (1906 1907) The 'partnering relationship' between them was frequently highly problematic and eventually disintegrated for good. Meyerhold at this point of time was seeking more radical, experimental alternatives to the traditional mimetic system of art (the one which will eventually acquire the name of Constantine Satanislavsky) However, whereas Meyerhold's future 'biomechanics' was obsessed with emancipating theatre from its innate (inter)dependence on literature, his leading/moving actors were (still) not entirely relieved of verbal speech per se (with more intensity of course, distributed to their body language) Essentially, Meyerhold's theatre still was largely dependent on the 'realm of the literary' offering a new language of representation so to speak.

title: Eleonora Duse e Vera Komissarzhevskaya: un mosaico di tessere policrome
abstract: Eleonora Duse was nicknamed the "Divine" and Komissarzhevskaya "Joan of Arc" of the Russian scene.Icons of the sacred feminine,they were projected by the collective imagination in a higher dimension,link between the real and spiritual world

title: Bearers of Light: The Search for the Sacred in Vera Komissarzhevskaya and Wassily Kandinsky
abstract: Kandinsky and Komissarzhevskaya probably never met. Where they certainly did meet is in the common ground of their conception of the role of the artist. Both saw their work as the product of an inescapable inner need and both viewed it as sacred. In the chaotic years of the early twentieth century, Komissarzhevskaya, Kandinsky and Elena Guro, actress, painter and poetess, were important reference points for many Russian artists and intellectuals. For them art was a way to study, an instrument that allowed them to explore another dimension of reality, to make the invisible, visible, to reveal the hidden essence of things. The search for common roots between these artists has focused the analysis in the field of archaeology and visual arts and has discovered, in Scythian art, Shamanism and the cult of the Mother Goddess, new perspectives for the interpretation of expressive form in these artists.

title: VIRTUAL MUSEUM DEVOTED TO VERA KOMISSARZHEVSKAYA
abstract: The result of this project is a web portal of the theatrical and virtual museum dedicated to the work of the great Russian actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya, developed in the framework of a joint project of the ITMO University with the Roman University "Tor Vergata" curator Donatella Gavrilovich. The content for development was provided by the Saint Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music (St. Petersburg) and A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum (Moscow) The development of this theater virtual museum was based on the technical recommendations for the creation of virtual museums, developed by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, as well as on its own unique methodology developed specifically for this interdisciplinary project.

title: Vera Komissarzhevskaya meets Eleonora Duse. The "Joan of Arc" of the Russian scene and the "Divina" of Italian theatre

title: Ippolit Novskii i Vladimir Pollak: vliublennye v teatr (materialy k tvorcheskoi biografii)
abstract: Ippolit Novsky and Vladimir Pollak are the names that will say nothing to modern theatergoers, and even those experts who know the theatrical past of our country well may hardly recollect them. Nevertheless, these two made their contribution to the development of Russian theatrical art. Educated, multi talented, antiquity experts, they, unfortunately, did not leave any memoirs. Even their letters are almost not survived to our days. The Soviet history of the 1930s knows many similar examples. That time, when people had to destroy their priceless records, personal correspondence, their own memories, can be called the New Middle Ages. Unfortunately, that fully affected our heroes, especially V. Pollak, who was an assistant director in the V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Leningrad Drama Theater in the 1960s. Otherwise, we would surely know much more about their lives and companionship. And the people around them were more than worthy of our notice. Hereditary nobleman Ippolit Petrovich Semenovsky (pseudonym Novsky) was a close friend of E.B. Vakhtangov and B.M. Sushkevich; together with the collaboration of B.M. Sushkevich and N.N. Bromley, he shared their Leningrad creative period. He played first in the Moscow Art Theater, and then on the stage of the A.S. Pushkin Leningrad State Academic Drama Theater, taught acting at the Central Theater School, in the workshops of B.M. Sushkevich and E.I. Time, and at the Karelian Finnish Studio. During the siege of Leningrad, I.P. Novsky was working on the radio, and the works of Russian classics in his performance supported the strength and hope of the Leningraders. I.P. Novsky and V.M. Pollak had to go through many dramatic events, but they retained their devotion and deep love for the theater. They were among those inconspicuous but indispensable servants of Melpomene.

title: Reminiscences about Blok [Vospominaniya o Bloke] by V. Verigina
abstract: The article tells the story of a memoir about A. Blok written by V. Verigina (1882 1974) and includes a commented version of the notes for her public report 'Blok and Komissarzhevskaya's Theatre' 'Blok i Teatr Komissarzhevskoy' delivered on 4 December 1924. The notes add details to the reminiscences of the actress who knew Blok and friends of L. Blok and N. Volokhova. The notes also reveal the date when Verigina began working on the memoirs. Unlike her published texts, the speaker notes contain a direct reference to the poet's traits of a 'great man' (according to Carlyle) and put more emphasis on Blok's relationship with N. Volokhova, Komissarzhevskaya's Theatre, and V. Meierhold in the years 1906 1908. The manuscript was preserved in the archive of the Soviet literary critic Evgenia Fyodorovna Knipovich (1898 1988) who belonged to Blok's inner circle in 1918 1921, and later supervised research at the Association of Blok Studies (under the auspices of the State Academy of Artistic Studies, GAKhN) in 1923 1929, at the time when Verigina presented her report to the Association.

title: From drama to prose (unknown pages of the biography of R.P. Kumov)
abstract: Based on the archival materials, the article deals with the unknown pages of the biography of R.P. Kumov. The author describes the role of actress V.F. Komissarzhevskaya and writer I.L. Leontyev Shcheglov in the literary life of the Don writer and playwright. The article represents the analysis of the correspondence of R.P. Kumov and I.L. Leontyev Shcheglov that allows reconstructing the creative history of a number of works by R.P. Kumov.

title: La scena rubata. Vera Komissarzevskaja e Francesca da Rimini a Mosca
abstract: In the autumn of 1907, Vera Komissarzhevskaya commissioned the poet Valerij Brjusov to translate the text of the tragedy Francesca da Rimini by Gabriele d'Annunzio, never staged in Russia. Unbeknown to the actress, Bryusov gave his translation of the tragedy to Alexander Lensky, director of the Malyj Theater in Moscow. When Komissarzhevskaya was informed about Bryusov's dishonesty, she was deeply sorrow for the poet's behaviour. Nonetheless, the actress faced the situation and won the challenge. On 1 September 1908, Francesca da Rimini was premiered at the Malyj Theater in Moscow, directed by Lensky. On 4 September 1908, Vera Komissarzhevskaya's Dramatic Theater company staged the tragedy by d'Annunzio at the Ermitazhe Theater in Moscow, directed by Nikolay Evreinov. The article reconstructs this intricate story.

title: Behind the Scenes: Theatre Women Write to Literary Men
abstract: In this article Natalia Yakubova explores the interactions between theatre and literature as between an actress on one side and a man of letters on the other. The interactions discussed here came at a particular historical moment, when the transition from an actor centred to a director centred hierarchy was taking place, and the article deals with the letters written by actresses to the men who were playwrights and/or theoreticians of the new theatre: Eleonora Duse writing to Gabriele D'Annunzio, Vera Komissarzhevskaya to Valery Bryusov, Irena Solska to Jerzy Zulawski, and Gertrud Eysoldt to Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In each case study, attention is paid to the characteristics of the relationships between a given actress and a particular writer, their attitudes towards theatre reform, the way in which the actresses evaluated the literary status of their letter writing, and, significantly, the stylistic features of their writing. Natalia Yakubova is a senior researcher of the State Institute of Art Studies in Moscow, and was Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences between 2013 and 2015. She is author of O Witkacym (2010) and Teatr epokhi peremen v Polshe, Vengrii i Rossii 1990 ye 2010 ye (2014) and has published numerous articles in Russia, Poland, the USA, and Canada, among other countries.