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authorities monopolize the rest. There is practically no civilian-passenger traffic and no movement of goods whatsoever. During the entire trip of six weeks, from Krasnojarsk to Petrograd, we met but two freight trains in movement, and their whole lading was six carloads of salt. I will not go into the details of how, in the course of our journey, one of us Red Guardists became an invalid military prisoner, who was to be exchanged because of critical heart disease. It took us altogether eight weeks to reach Petrograd because we were detained in Ekaterinburg a fortnight. But Petrograd itself was the city of all our hopes, the portal to the homeland we had longed for and dreamed of during six years. At least that was what it seemed to us to be, as our train slowly passed through the endless factory suburbs to the Lett railway station. If a person were to look at the city through differently-colored spectacles, it might make quite another impression. The first thing that struck us was the fact that the factories and workshops were silent. We passed through a forest of tall brick chimneys, but not one of them was smoking. On both sides of the track were factory buildings, but in none of them could we detect men working. Things looked still worse when we left the railway station to go into the city. The streets were dirty and deserted; the shops were vacant. The world seemed to live under a nightmare pall. I walked down the Nevsky Prospect and could not conceive how it ever was regarded one of the most famous avenues of the world. Silence, desolation, houses with windows boarded up and covered with placards, not a vehicle in sight, no evidence that the streets had been cleaned for weeks!

It did not take long to enlighten us as to the black nightmare which was lying like lead on Petrograd and paralyzing its life and activity. It was hunger!

We thought we had seen the spectre of famine in Siberia, but here it was real. 'Give me a crust of suchari (dried black bread)' is the appeal with which every traveler from the East is bombarded as soon as he arrives.

Let me tell two incidents to illustrate what conditions are. A little girl about eight years old begged something of me, and I gave her a piece of dry bread. She grabbed it greedily and bit into it. Just then, a lady who apparently belonged to the better classes passed by. She pushed the little child so that she fell, snatched the bread from her, and quickly stuck it in her own mouth. In despair, too grieved even to cry, the child gazed after her piece of bread, her lost paradise. Now for my second experience. It happened during our first day in Petrograd, before we realized fully what the situation was. I had eaten a little piece of bacon which I had saved over from the railway journey. I carelessly threw a thin peeling of the rind into the street. At once, six bystanders, who evidently had been watching me, hurled themselves upon it and fought madly in the street dirt for that shred of rind. At last a young fellow managed to get it, thrust it quickly in his mouth, and swallowed it.

In Petrograd I was converted into a North German and lived in the old German embassy. The new embassy building has been destroyed, so the German Workers' and Soldiers' Council has installed itself in the old one. This body represents the German Communist Party, and since Russia at that time recognized no other authority than this party in Germany, the council functioned as the diplomatic agent of that country, handled all the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners, determined who should be sent home, inspected passports, and the like. Alas for the man whom they suspected of sympathizing with the bourgeoisie! I met people here

who had tried in vain for months to get away. It was an exceedingly interesting experience. It was necessary that I should become a convinced Bolshevik again. I was already expert at that profession and soon was a highly respected man in the German Workers' and Soldiers' Council, and permitted a glimpse behind the scenes. It was very much as it had been in Krasnojarsk, only more brutal. Outside, famine was raging, but here the commissioners and their ladies lived in revelry and plenty. Outside, people were begging for a crumb of bread. In the embassy building, the commissioners sat down to a table where meat, milk, eggs, and white bread were in superfluity. They drank wine and mixed punches. I, myself, was a guest at such a banquet. The common people, of course, know this, and this helps to explain their bitter hatred of the Bolshevist government.

One of the most interesting experiences of my stay, was a ball which I attended, given by the German Workers' and Soldiers' Council in the ballrooms of the German embassy. The leaders of the Bolsheviki try to copy the bourgeoisie in their manners, habits, and affectations, and this ball was as nearly as possible a counterpart of a good bourgeois ball. The ladies were not coarse proletarian women, but evidently people accustomed to better things. One might be surprised that anyone should wish to dance and enjoy himself in such a morass of misery as Petrograd. But people became callous to misery. They learn to regard it as natural and normal and to forget about it. One of the principal attractions of the occasion was naturally the refreshments, which were served in the reception room of the old embassy building. They included cheese, butter, fresh bread, coffee with cream, and similar delicacies which only the council members had at their disposal. Hunger is a frightful destroyer

of morals. No one, even of the better classes, resists the temptation to become completely subservient to the powers that be in order to get food. One young woman told me in a quiet matter-offact way that she had formed an alliance with one of the commissioners merely because, as his Communist wife, she received so many pounds of bread, butter, and meat. I have brought from Siberia quite a quantity of the dry black bread, or the suchari, I have mentioned, and of soap, which is next to bread the most sought for and the rarest commodity in Petrograd. Everyone I met importuned me for this before I left, with the argument that I would not need it after I crossed the border.

Practically all of the women I met at the ball were filling positions in the Soviet government, for everyone must work in order to have a bread card. They also pick up a good deal of money in speculation. Every article passes through a dozen hands before it reaches the consumer. Trade, of course, is forbidden, in some cases under penalty of death; but that does not check this practice. If an article is absolutely necessary, its price reaches incredible heights. During my stay in Ekaterinburg, I served as an interpreter once for a sick man who bought a vial of salvarsan which is used in cases of recurrent typhus. He paid down a million rubles in thousand- and ten-thousand-ruble notes for this medicine.

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THE LIVING SCENE

BY GORDON CRAIG

[Mr. Gordon Craig, who has long been known as one of the most original workers in the modern theatre, read this paper before the Art Workers' Guild almost a year ago, but it remained unpublished until last month. We publish elsewhere in this issue, comment on his new book, The Theatre Advancing.]

From The English Review, June
(INDEPENDENT LIBERAL MONTHLY)

'C'EST le décor vivant avec toute sa machinerie nouvelle.'

In these words some new work of mine was described last month by a French writer, and I will take them as my cue.

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Scene must be living, - seemingly alive, breathing as in Nature the Earth seems to breathe, its flanks lying spread out like the sprawling limbs of the striped tiger, its immense eyes opening wider and ever wider, and then closing with the close of day, its locks fluttering in the breezes.

When Scene becomes decoration, it ceases to have quite the same value that it has when it lives and moves. The Earth on which we, the actors, play our parts is not exactly a decorative background. Although at times it retires, although at times it is just decorative and no more, at times mere background, unnoticeable.

But not for long, remember. Before many moments or hours are passed, it will advance and come to life. Sometimes it pushes us all into the background, sometimes it overwhelms, and then in a moment is become the quiet and lovely thing we are apt to take it always to be.

And Scene should be like this. And those of us who concern ourselves at all with Scene should remember what it is we have to interpret. If we have ever

really listened to the showers or basked in sunshine, we can but return to attempt to give life to our scene. The Poet peers at Man and, seeing, creates a living thing.

Are we who are to create Scene to give birth to a dead thing, just because we will not first look at the Earth?

Some say so. A fine idea, indeed, - a monstrous fine idea, to be asked to litter the stage with lumber, and then to suppose that this dead and dusty décor is to aid the Drama.

A dull and staid and decorative nothing, which shall keep its place, be in good form, just because it's dead.

It is about time to get that fixed idea out of the heads of everyone. It never entered the head of the Dramatist, who does n't fear a living Scene any more than does the Poet or the Musician.

It is the literary critic who fears everything living even fears when a Poet or a Dramatist, though he be his dear friend, is showing signs of creating living men and women.

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Nature seldom reveals, but beating rhythmically, demonstrating the existence of life.

No, the Critic forsooth will have none of this. And why, do you think? For what reason? For the simplest of allthat he has never thought it possible, although his suspicions may have once been horridly awakened. Well, then, he is exonerated from all blame, for the man who never dreamed a thing possible must not be blamed because he will have none of it.

So our good friend the Critic must remain still our good friend; and as he is able better than most men quickly to understand an idea, even from a hint, a sketch, a suggestion, he will possibly think for one moment of what we say now, what we are demonstrating in our Scene, and will then speak better about it all than any of us.

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After all, that is his business ours. But I don't think it is his business to speak so of our tentative experiments as if in one leap we ought to arrive at perfection. If he sees where we are going and what we intend, he must not send the party who are following our lead into a paroxysm of panic by saying we are leading them astray.

For we are not. We are moving toward a new theatre.

In this adventure and surely you all like a spice of risk about any trip No? in this adventure, then, in this search for the Scène vivante, we must not utterly forget its new machinery 'sa machinerie nouvelle.'

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realism, is, after all, no real enemy. He has merely been given too many opportunities for indulging his natural appetites that is all. It is most natural in him to desire to see and fondle all those wheels and cogs, turntables, bridges; and no amount of electric wires, bulbs, resistances, and volts is too much for his taste.

We can surely understand this. Why, if we artists were mechanics, we would go to far greater lengths than he does.

But if we are not mechanics, we know that mechanism and machinery cannot be excluded from our work. It is one of our very best servants, and every opportunity should be given it to do itself justice and render the service it wants to render to the head of the house, the Dramatist, and to his overseer, the Stage Manager.

The very best machines should be used, and the best machines will, of course, cost money. They are worth the money. But only when the Artist into whose hands the machines are given finds them after his heart-when they are alive.

Now, unfortunately, some of the machines in use to-day in theatres are a nuisance to the artist to the stagemanager-dramatist, let us call him.

They do nothing but go up and go down, these machines; except, of course when they go round. But how to put to use this up-down and round-about white elephant is the question all artists ask themselves. They go on asking and asking for forty or fifty yearsand then die; and a fresh batch of artists come along, blithe and gay, and worry themselves with the same riddle, and in their turn pass away.

But this is not all. Every fifty years or so, new elephantine machines get installed in the richest theatres, so that the new generation of artists not only has to tackle the conundrum of its ancestors, but also to crack these new nuts.

I won't name the machines which we artists know to be such as I describe, because there is not much good gained by worrying our good friend the mechanic of the theatre and, besides, he has to help us to find other and better machines and install them, too, we hope. We can't possibly spare him he must do this.

But what we have to do is to tell him and show him what we need what sort of servant our needs demand. The place best fitted to show him this is a theatre where the stage is a plain and empty one, free from the mechanical devices, and where the architect has not cramped us within walls too close for the limbs of the Drama to move and stretch themselves.

Then, with our friend the mechanic, and with plenty of time and enough money, we can evolve a mechanism which shall assist in bringing to life Scene, which assists in bringing to life Drama.

And now let me tell you of one quality which I think our Scene and our new mechanism might to advantage possess, and which it does not at present possess. (At present it baulks us, our Scene and our machine. It conspires with the trade, — it holds us up, the brigand!)

It is mobility.

And I think it is here that the artist steps in I think it is here that he is really needed. When folks say that all artists are 'impractical,' I believe that what they mean is, that among other defects, they will not let themselves become fixed; they have a few fixed ideas, it is true, but one of these is to keep their minds their imagination mobile, fluid. This, to the admirably ordered senses of our friends, seems to be a defect, but is in fact a first-class quality; and it is this quality which is now so needed to release our scene-light

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ing and its mechanisms, from the deathly trance into which they have fallen.

You probably want to know what I consider is the best way of improving our stage decoration. I can tell you without a moment's hesitation. It is by employing our stage decorators - the fair, the pretty good, and the best all of them. At present they are not employed as they should be - not all of them. It is by being more just, more exact in our estimate of these men. Let us not praise a turnip in the same terms we apply to a rose.

And you younger men do not break away from appearances, and then put on a new appearance. Go deeper than that. And, removing a root-error, replace it by a truth.

It is time to make great changes great reforms, if you don't object to the word.

It is time to stop rearranging the dead flowers in the vase; throw them away. Go out into the open air; for it is the season to sow fresh seed, and watch it tirelessly until a new plant begins to show above ground.

Then, if the plant be hearty, any old ground will serve, and no amount of inclement weather can harm it.

Avoid new arrangements of the old sceneries, then, and plump for new principles; new roots must be established, new life must be desired.

The first thing a Scene should have is mobility. And I think that, if each artist will feel and think for himself, we can have four or five examples of mobility in Scene within a year, within a month.

Only, the artists must think for themselves, and must reject the suggestions I have given them in my screens

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