Beyond Rehearsal

Book excerpt: Anatoly Efros (1925-1987), one of the most admired and original directors of post-war Russia, directed at the Central Children's Theatre, Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, Lenkom Theatre, Moscow Art Theatre, Taganka Theatre, the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the Toen Theatre in Tokyo. He taught directing at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts and wrote several influential books about dramatic interpretation and practice. His productions received numerous international awards for excellence. Beyond Rehearsal is a compilation of selections from his third and fourth books. It includes refreshingly new treatments of Summer and Smoke, Three Sisters, Hamlet, Tartuffe, and The Misanthrope, among others. Efros also writes with perception and feeling about Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, as well as a broad range of theatre issues in need of reform or re-thinking in the West as well as in Russia. Beyond Rehearsal centers on «the absurd things in our work that have not disappeared yet», «complex questions of art», and the «celebratory» aspects of working in the theatre.