The Tragedy of Pushkin's Little Tragedies

The Tragedy of Pushkin's Little Tragedies is that they are rarely performed because of how difficult they are to stage. In fact, there has not been a successful production of The Little Tragedies ever recorded in the West or in Russia; because of this, it is often stated that these works are best for recitation instead of staging (Evdokimova, 6). The first, and most obvious, problem in staging these works is their short length; due to their length, there is little action, little character development, and a narrative that obtains ambiguous endings and few theatrical effects. Because there are few effects and little action, the role of the actor becomes extremely important in relaying to the audience what is important, dramatic, and crucial--everything that the actor conveys to the audience must relate back to what the director and the ensemble has decided is Pushkin's intention. However, because the play is written to be ambiguous, the task of the actor is then nearly impossible. Ambiguous and generalized acting makes for uninteresting acting, and with a storyline that involves very little action, the show can quickly become a snooze-fest if the director and the ensemble are not one hundred percent clear on what they are trying to portray.

Why would Pushkin write something so ambiguous and difficult to stage? To answer this question, it is important to look back at the ideas of romanticism that Pushkin was employing in this work. Within romanticism, there are aspects of the "fragmentary, the inconclusive, the ambiguous...incompleteness was best represented by fragments and, therefore, in most cases, shorter forms" (10-11). Therefore, what makes Pushkin's tragedies even more difficult to stage is that their ambiguity is intentional and is all for the sake of romanticism. The director, actor, or reader is then left with the question of whether or not the play should be analyzed and picked apart. Should we, as a reader, strive to make sense of them? Should we strive to come up with a specific meaning, narration, action, and ending? Or, in doing so, would we be wrecking Pushkin's true goal of creating ambiguous, fragmented, brief tragedies of the human condition?

Another problem in staging lies in their groupings. Those brave souls who have attempted to produce The Little Tragedies have either staged them all together, back to back, as they were written, or have staged them individually. The problem with staging them all together is that often times the directors and actors try to find some large overarching theme or metaphor to connect all the plays together, often resulting in over-generalizations of each tragedy. If they are staged individually, the directors often add extra action and silence that was not intended by Pushkin in order to fill the time.

As you can see, the difficulties in staging the plays are numerous, and in my opinion, the problems lie in trying to fit Pushkin's tragedies into categorized theatrical genres that do not serve the plays or convey Pushkin's intentions. What is needed is a whole new style of theatre and acting--for example, Jerzy Grotowski created The Poor Theatre, Brecht created his own Brechtian technique, Artaud created the Theatre of Cruelty, etc etc. What this theatrical style would consist of is nearly impossible to say since we do not know what Pushkin's intentions were in writing the tragedies; however, we do know his feelings towards romanticism, and that seems to be a good starting off point, as little as it may be.