Vladimír Gamza: the comedian’s system

ABSTRACT

It is well known that after 1918 the newly founded Czechoslovakia became an asylum for thousands of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian emigrants. Among the exiles we find former members of the MAT and its First Studio. Kachalov’s Group in Prague is a well-known example. This was also a period of significant repatriation of a number of Czechoslovaks settled in Russia. Among them was Vladimír Gamza (1902–29), an admirer of the First Studio, who attempted to implement its programme in Czechoslovakia by setting up the Czech Studio (1924–5 season) and the Art Studio (1926–7). Gamza quickly developed a passion for Russian modernist theatre, which he was exposed to until he was 17. His direct experience of Russian theatre is linked to the pre-revolutionary period. In this essay I will discuss how we can trace a partial knowledge of the Stanislavsky System in his work and its reflection.

KEYWORDS:

• Stanislavsky
• Gamza
• Stanislavsky system
• acting
• Russian exile
• Czechoslovakia

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Jochmanová, “České a Umělecké studio Vladimíra Gamzy,” 285.

2. Boháč, Tisíc a jeden život, 28; Inov, Литературно-театральная, концертная деятельность, 12–3.

3. His father’s name was Hamza, but Vladimír Gamza kept the Russian variant of his surname after his arrival in Czechoslovakia.

4. “The activities of those in exile from Russia waned during the 1930s, along with the decreasing numbers of emigrants settling in Czechoslovakia. Of the approximately 25,000 exiles at the height of the exile period around the mid-1920s, only about 6,000 to 8,000 remained in the Czechoslovakia in the second half of the following decade.” Hauser, Emigrace z Ruska v meziválečném Československu. (All translations from Czech are the author’s.) In the last two decades, there has been an increased research interest in the topic of Russian emigrés in the interwar Czechoslovakia. See books such as Drapala et al, Cesty do utopie and Inov, Литературно-театральная, концертная деятельность.

5. “Those in exile that decided to settle and assimilate themselves, in the sense of merging with the larger society, sought to acquire the Czechoslovak citizenship from the late 1920s onwards. However, most of the internationally active intellectual and cultural exiles retained the so-called Nansen passports (named after the League of Nations’ Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen). These were issued from the second half of the 1920s, primarily in connection with the emigration from the Soviet Union, providing refugees with international protection and allowing them to travel and return to the country that issued the pass. These cards were retained by some of the community in exile well into the 1940s.” Hauser, Emigrace z Ruska v meziválečném Československu.

6. Kolátor, O Vladimíru Gamzovi, 12–3.

7. Ibid., 11; Hilar, “Jaký byl Gamza,” 4.

8. Hilar, “Jaký byl Gamza,” 4.

9. Burian, Modern Czech Theatre, 34.

10. Boháč, Tisíc a jeden život, 42; Kolátor, O Vladimíru Gamzovi, 14; Jochmanová, “České a umělecké studio Vladimíra Gamzy.”

11. In their study of Lev Vygotsky, Tania Zittoun and Paul Stenner draw attention to the transformative moments caused by a long-term stay and treatment and compare it to a liminal period: “However, liminal transitions do not always resolve well: The ‘liminal’ phase may at times be lasting, and people can become ‘stuck’ in transition, which has been identified as ‘liminal hotspots’ (Greco & Stenner, 2017). Vygotsky, we will argue, lived through times of intense social transformations, leading to multiple cumulative and overlapping transitions and liminal experiences, some of which were experienced as liminal hotspots; we will examine how his engagement with Hamlet and his theorization of art reflect his experience of using literature and the arts to support transitions and move out of liminal hotspots.” In Zittoun and Stenner, “Vygotsky’s Tragedy,” 2. In this way we can understand the “in-between time” that caused the transformation of Gamza’s creative intentions.

12. It is not entirely clear from the surviving sources what the disease was. One source mentions renal disease of tuberculous origin. In Rutte and Kodíček, Nové české divadlo 1928–1929, 113.

13. Jochmanová, “České a umělecké studio Vladimíra Gamzy.”

14. Fleischner, Divadlo v přerodu, 46.

15. Burian, Modern Czech Theatre, 44.

16. Digrin, Bohuš Záhorský, 14.

17. Ibid., 14.

18. Turner, Vakhtangov: The Director as Teacher, 232.

19. Ibid., 17.

20. Jochmanová, “České a umělecké studio Vladimíra Gamzy,” 287.

21. Hilar, “Jaký byl Gamza,” 4; Digrin, Bohuš Záhorský, 14.

22. Honzl, Divadelní a literární podobizny, 104.

23. Papoušková-Melniková, “Má setkání s Vladimírem Gamzou,” 19.

24. Fleischner, Divadlo v přerodu, 46; Gamza, Deník.

25. Fleischner, Divadlo v přerodu, 47. Already in 1915, Czech theatre had been deeply influenced by German stage expressionism. One of the major figures of Czech expressionism was the director Karel Hugo Hilar, who has been described by Burian as being “drawn to the expressionist movement that was gathering full force as he began his work in theatre.” In Burian, Modern Czech Theatre, 24. Czech audiences could have encountered Russian expressionism during the guest performances of the MAT’s First Studio in 1922 and the performances of the Habima in 1928. In Brabec, Dějiny českého divadla 4. díl, 64–5.

26. Kolátor, O Vladimíru Gamzovi, 25; Honzl, Divadelní a literární podobizny, 104.

27. Kraflová-Pospěchová, “Inscenace Českého a Uměleckého studia ve svědectví Vladimíra Gamzy,” 56.

28. Gamza, Vznik a historie Uměleckého studia; cf. Malaev-Babel, The Vakhtangov Sourcebook, 201.

29. Malaev-Babel, The Vakhtangov Sourcebook, 36.

30. Gamza, Vznik a historie Uměleckého studia.

31. Pilátová, Hnízdo Grotowského, 283.

32. Papoušková-Melniková, “Má setkání s Vladimírem Gamzou,” 19. Gamza’s religious zeal was close to sectarianism, but not identical to it. Those traits are more likely to be found in programmatically communist Czech avant-garde artists such as the director Jindřich Honzl. This is no coincidence given the Czech Protestant tradition of the 15th century. With Gamza, on the other hand, we find the lasting influence of the atmosphere of the First Studio of the MAT, which offered a different model. Thus, in Gamza’s case, it is necessary to speak of a community and a theatre collective rather than a sect.

33. Boháč, Tisíc a jeden život, 28; Inov, Литературно-театральная, концертная деятельность, 12–3.

34. Inov, Литературно-театральная, концертная деятельность; Brabec, Dějiny českého divadla 4. díl, 64–5.

35. Senelick, Wandering Stars; Inov, Литературно-театральная, концертная деятельность, 43–60.

36. Jochmanová, “České a Umělecké studio Vladimíra Gamzy,” 290.

37. Papoušková-Melniková, “Teorie Stanislavského.”

38. Papoušková-Melniková, Moskevské umělecké divadlo.

39. Gamza, Deník.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 256.

43. Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 224.

44. Stanislavski, My Life in Art, 256.

45. Ibid., 256; emphasis in the original.

46. Ibid., 350.

47. Gamza, Vznik a historie Uměleckého studia, 13.

48. Gamza, Deník; Gamza, O režii.

49. Gamza, O režii. For translating the Czech terms, I use the selected glossary in Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 211–27.

50. The only exception is an undifferentiated 1928 remark in his diary “exposing the subconscious.”

51. Gamza, O režii, 38.

52. Ibid., 28.

53. Ibid., 15–6.

54. Книппер Чехова, O. Л. Переписка (1896–1959), Ч. 2, 140.

55. Vladimír Macura analyzes the complicated state of Czech theatre and drama caused by the absence of the Romantic period in the book Znamení zrodu a České sny (The Sign of Creation and Czech Dreams). At this point, the development of theatre in Slavic cultures such as Russian and Polish diametrically diverges from the development of Czech theatre. On specifics of Czech culture in connection to the phenomenon of “schweiking,” see Pytlík, “Švejk jako literární typ.”

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Martina Musilová

Martina Musilová, Ph.D. (1969), graduated in theatre studies from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, where she successfully defended her thesis in 2007 (published in 2011 under the title Fauefekt. Vlivy Brechtova epického divadla a zcizujícího efektu v českém moderním herectví). During her university studies Musilová attended Professor Ivan Vyskočil’s lectures of Dialogical Acting with the Inner Partner at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. Since 1999 she has been working as an assistant in this discipline. Since 2009 Musilová has lectured at the Department of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno, between 2013–2019 at the Department of Theory and Criticism, and since 2019 at the Department of authorial creativity and pedagogy at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. Since 2020 Musilová has been acting as the Head of the Institute for Research and Study of Authorial Acting at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. She specializes in the history and theory of acting and the theatricality of public events. As a dramaturge Musilová has worked with directors J. Adámek and P. Tejnorová on a long-term basis. She is the editor of the books Experimentální hry (2005, FRA, Experimental plays by Ernst Jandl and Frederike Mayröcker) and Mluvit a naslouchat (2019, FRA, To Speak and to Listen by Gertrude Stein). Contact: [email protected]