Theatre Design & Technology - May 1973 - 13

BEHIND THE SOVIET SCENES:
LAWRENCE AND LEE TOUR US SR
GLENN M. LONEY, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
Early in 1972,
Russia's Culture Minister, Mme.
Ekaterina Furtseva, toured the United States with her
aide, Mme. Butrova, who supervises cultural exchanges.
Mme. Furtseva was duly interviewed by the New York
Times. She indicated that the time has come for more
artistic interchange between America and the Soviet
Union. This safari to such supposed outposts of creativity
as Manhattan and Hollywood excited a lot of attention -and even raised some hopes.
It was, however, preceded by a parallel trip -- in the
opposite direction -- which has not received the publicity
it deserves. This was the expedition made by the American
playwriting team, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee,
in November 1971, to study exchange possibilities between the U.S. and Russia. Each year, the Department of
State has proposed a list of our writers, directors, designers, or actors for potential visits to the Soviets. Most
of these suggestions have been ignored, but designers such
as Boris Aronson have been invited.
Lawrence, long a member of the State Department's
Cultural Exchange Committee, could not very well nominate himself, so the Russians took the initiative. The
team's Inherit the Wind, a highly successful dramatization
of the famed Scopes Monkey Trial, is well known on
Russian stages. Embassy members had also seen and
admired Lawrence and Lee's recent The Night Thoreau
Spent in Jail.
Arriving in Russia, the authors were greeted at the
airport by both Mmes. Furtseva and Butrova. They were
handed rubles to spend; so many that they had to give
back some of them when they left.
Perhaps the rubles were not just a friendly gesture for
official guest artists. Russia does not honor the international copyright law with the predictable result that
American authors who are published or performed in the
Soviet Union get no royalties. In fact, one of the reasons
Lawrence and Lee, also very active members of the
Dramatists' Gu ild, were eager to make the trip was to find
ways of changing th is situation. The Soviet government,
they believe, has no intention of altering its position,
which would require the disbursement of rubles - or the
release of dollar reserves. Accordingly, Lawrence and Lee

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THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

pursued promising talks with leading playwrights in the
Writers' Union. They are hopeful that improvements can
come through negotiations at th is level.
Just as important, however, are the contacts made to
further the exchange of dramas, artists, and productions
between the two nations. American plays, especially those
of such prominent American playwrights
as Miller,
Williams, Albee, Hellman, and Inge, are already well known
to Russian audiences. What Russians do not know is how
these plays look and sound in American productions. To
the expressed doubts of Lawrence and Lee about the
viability of such an exchange, the Russians told them:
Many people know English. And we can understand your
productions. We've already had My Fair Lady and Porgy
and Bess! We have done so many of your plays in Russian.
But we have never seen a Henry Fonda or a Sidney Poitier
act in them. The British have brought their best theatre
here. So have the French, and even the Roumanians ...
and far more Russians understand English than understand
Roumanian!
When Lawrence and Lee returned to the U.S., they
went to see John Richardson, Assistant Secretary of State
for Cultural and Educational Affairs. He is in favor of
more exchanges, as is our Ambassador to the Soviet Union
and Mmes. Furtseva and Butrova. "They told us," says
Lawrence, " 'Please do send us your theatre companies in
your best plays!' ".
It was a bit difficult, the authors admit, to have to
explain that America has relatively few permanent acting
ensembles -- and almost none of long-standing. The conditions under which the American and especially Broadway
theatre operates were unbelievable to the Russians Lawrence and Lee talked to when they lectured at such
schools as the Gorki Institute, the Leningrad Theatre
School, the film school - called VLI K - and the Moscow
Art Theatre School.
The technical work of the many Soviet theatres they
visited impressed the team. Visiting the great central
scene-shops in Moscow, which builds settings for a number
of Soviet theatres, they were amazed to find an archive
containing sketches, drawings, and photos of every
Russian production. All are given a permanent record.
This work is financed by the profits from the operation

MAY, 1973

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