Daily Archives: March 1, 2016

The Green Dog at the Cat Circus

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I was looking forward to spending the afternoon with my cousin Oleg, whom I hadn’t seen in years. He was waiting on the snowy steps outside my dormitory. “We’re going to the circus.” Ada, his girlfriend, had gotten last-minute tickets to take her little sister to a show called “A Winter’s Tale” and on the spur of the moment, I couldn’t come up with a better plan. A trip to the circus was really not on my to-do list for two weeks in Moscow. In fact, surrounded by world-class theaters, museums, and food, listening to shrieking children and watching actors run around in clown noses and wigs was probably the last activity that I would have chosen. But I had no way out. At least I’d see bears trained to take vodka shots, I thought, or maybe a Russian-roaring tiger.

We were greeted in the lobby by a clown wearing felt boots under his galoshes, quilted pants, and a blue polka dot button-up, in all ways a stark contrast to the circus-goers. The dressing room next door was packed with little boys in slacks and girls in fancy dresses. The boys tied their ties while the girls changed from their bulky winter boots into glittery heels under the strict gaze of their parents and grandparents. “Do you remember how to untie your laces, Anya?” an elderly lady asked a smiling blonde girl in a purple velvet dress, while parting a boy’s hair with a wooden comb. “I do!” the boy responded. “How many times must I tell you not to raise your voice indoors?!” chided the grandmother. “You’re in a theater, for goodness’ sake!” Oleg told me how his parents bought him a new pair of slacks to go to the circus and took him to the circus cafe to make sure he could properly sip a Russian fruit drink called компот in public. For the grown-ups, any show is a welcome chance to teach their children manners.

Finally, the crowd of well-trained children and their trainers moved to take their seats. A wave of shushes swept through the room as the first chords sounded. The show plot was quite simple, as the recommended age for viewers was 0+. On a snowy winter day, a hunter comes to a forest. His repeated attempts at shooting are foiled by forest animals and their beautiful snow queen. He tries to shoot a bunny, played by a stocky man in a onesie, but the rifle flies out of the hunter’s hands and onto a little sled – a sled pulled by a bushy white cat running on its hind paws. Not a human in a costume, but an actual feline cat. As the hunter chases the sled, another cat jumps in the way and he trips.

A cat circus. For the love of God, I’m watching a cat circus in what little free time I have here in Moscow.

The audience boisterously laughs. The cat with the sled with the rifle disappears behind the curtains. After several failed attempts at hunting, the hunter sees the error of his ways and befriends the animals of the forest. And the cats.

The cats’ job was to help the snow queen save the forest animals, but even when their services were not required, they were present on stage for no apparent reason. While the hunter argued with the snow queen in the middle of the forest, there was a completely irrelevant cat just sitting on a shelf in the background. I mentioned it to Oleg during intermission. “That,” he said, “is an excellent example of the ‘green dog method.’” “It’s a tactic rumored to have been used by a clever Soviet theater painter to avoid any criticism of the content or import of his art.” The Soviet government exercised control over any form of expression and regularly sent inspectors to determine whether a work was pro-Soviet enough to be shown to the public. The painter would add a little green dog to all of his pieces so the art inspectors’ committee would get caught up “convincing” him to paint over the misplaced green dog. The painter would thus avoid any serious critique.

Not even a children’s circus show could avoid a review by the committee, so the “green dog method” was transformed into the “cat method.” If one dog served as a distraction, dozens of cats would be more than enough. When inspecting the cat circus, the committee could argue whether there were too many cats on stage, whether it’s acceptable to use the American Shorthair breed, and whether Murka was a name patriotic enough for the star cat. The cats were enough work for inspectors to get so lost in fluff that they would miss a detail or two of potentially less-than-patriotic humor. Working with cats thus provided not only an artistic niche, but also some freedom from scrutiny.

Our discussion was interrupted by bells signaling the end of intermission. The music slowly drowned out whispered conversations and the already-familiar cats began to jump between the trees and the hunter’s head, climb through obstacle courses with his encouragement, and even paw their way across parallel bars. Both children and adults ooh’d and ah’d watching as cats surrounded the hunter, dancing in a frenzy on their hind paws and creating a flurry of motion over the stage. Even the parents seemed too captivated to shush their children and pull them back to the seats. Glancing at Ada, I saw that her smile was just as wide as that of her little sister, who was so entranced that she had forgotten to squirm and squeal. But as soon as the show ended and the human actors with cats weaving between their feet took their bows, the adults were back on duty, nagging and scolding.

I left wondering what it was that made the cat circus so wildly successful with audiences of all ages. By allowing viewers to reimagine unremarkable animals, maybe it has always served as relief from grey, banal life. Ada told me afterwards that, as a child she left the show convinced that her house cat was actually a bewitched prince charming.

Certainly the method of misplaced cats provided both an outlet for the imagination and protection from the art inspectors. Today, there are no government art inspectors and the law backs freedom of expression. Yet the circus website still describes its children’s shows as promoting not only respect for elders but also “love and respect for the Fatherland, its people and culture.” Performance arts in Russia are largely government funded, so such a disclaimer can only benefit the circus. I didn’t notice any pro-”Fatherland” lessons incorporated into the show, so maybe the “cat method” is just as useful in the circus today as it was decades ago.

Those who came to the circus as kids grew up yearning to experience a sense of freedom and return as adults with kids of their own. For brief moments, protected by the green dog— or, as in this case, cats— government-trained adults with their parent-trained children can find release from their manners, constraints and responsibilities in the whirling blur of the trained cats.

I can’t believe I hadn’t wanted to see the cat circus.

The Magic Flute

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I’ve always wanted to see The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) in person instead of just listening to it on disc, given that it premiered on my birthday two hundred and two years earlier. However, before being in Germany I had never gotten the chance to see a live performance. On Christmas Day the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper Berlin), which has been performing in Charlottenburg’s Schiller Theater for several years while its permanent home on Unter den Linden undergoes extensive renovation, offers a matinee “family performance” of Mozart’s famous 1791 work. As one might expect from an event geared towards families with children, the tickets are relatively cheap. I was willing to exchange what I assumed would be a loud theater full of chattering kids for a reasonable price.

Before walking into the theater I worried about how The Magic Flute would be staged. A recent trend in contemporary opera is for directors and set designers to attempt to “update” the classics, placing them into spaces where they don’t really fit. It’s difficult to merge an 18th-century story with a WWII setting, and the soaring emotions of a 19th-century opera (say, Puccini’s La Bohème or a work by Wagner) don’t quite meld with minimalist, industrial sets. Is it too much to ask that operas be operatic?

In that sense the Staatsoper’s production certainly delivers. The sets are based on the designs for an 1816 production of the opera, only 15 years after it originally premiered in Vienna. They are simply fantastic. Each and every backdrop has been hand-painted to produce a dream world— the banks of the Nile River dotted with palm trees at moonlight, a looming temple complex in the distance, and the swampy endlessness of a mythical forest. The addition of modern electrical lighting allows the sets to be particularly stunning. We can even clearly see the bright sunlight streaming between columns into a dark interior or the hazy, misty effects of a riverside twilight. The most stunning of all is the so-called “Star Dome,” a backdrop of glowing stars, originally designed for the 1816 production. The Queen of the Night, standing on a crescent moon and resting behind a screen of painted clouds, sings of her lost daughter in front of it. The costumes also show the influence of the early 19th century. The women don’t wear the structured and fitted redingotes of the 18th century, but instead flowing Empire gowns. The hero Tamino wears trousers and an overcoat, not the breeches and powdered wig of an earlier generation. The animals that come to listen to the music of the eponymous magic flute are neither mechanical creations nor special effects. The crocodiles, rabbits, horses, and wolves are actors in costume. It’s something unexpected in an era of fantastical special effects but it adds to the atmosphere of the performance, as we get a better sense of what an early audience may have seen on stage.

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Not every element is positive, however; The Magic Flute was written in a very different time and place from the society we live in today. It can be a somewhat problematic work, and many viewers find it difficult to separate the beauty of the music from the more discomforting elements of the story. The opera is set in Egypt and features presumably African characters, one of whom, Monostatos, is a central villain. In fact he and Pamina, the white heroine of the story, are the only two characters whose races are specified. The libretto, which contains references to “wicked Moors” and portrays Monostatos as a traitor and attempted rapist, is often edited in the English-speaking world to reflect the differences between 18th– and 21st-century attitudes towards race.

There are of course also many more people of African descent in the United States and England than there are in Germany, and thus more sensitivity and acknowledgment of what may and may not be offensive. The Staatsoper performance was not edited, but perhaps it ought to have been. It may be faithful to original performances but it is difficult not to flinch and be uncomfortable when a man who is clearly of white German descent walks out onto the stage wearing blackface.

When I expressed my shock at seeing blackface in the 21st century people were quick to insist that a white person painting their skin black only has racist implications in former colonies. According to the logic of the people I spoke to, blackface is racist in America because of slavery. It simply can’t be racist if a German does it, as Germany had no slavery. This viewpoint is not at all valid. Involvement in the slave trade may not have been as common as it was in other countries such as Britain or Spain, but many Germans were indeed slave traders. The German economy has been reliant on shipping and international trade for hundreds of years. During the 18th and 19th centuries and the height of European colonialism slavery would have been part of that economy. Germany was also a colonial power in Africa, where colonists openly bought and sold slaves until their defeat in WWI – less than a century ago. Even when some Germans know the history and cultural implications of blackface, it doesn’t bother them. To a German, blackface may be “just makeup,” as some of the people I spoke to suggested. But how can that possibly outweigh what it represents to many other people in the world?

After The Magic Flute ended the children and their parents left the theater, chattering happily about their favorite parts of the performance. As I walked back towards the train station alongside these families I couldn’t help but wonder. If German children are taught that blackface is “no big deal,” how will it affect their views as adults? The history of racism and colonialism is without question a complicated one, and may be difficult for children to comprehend. I understand demands for authenticity in art, and I understand that the role of Monostatos is itself problematic. However, updates are not inherently bad. Electric lighting didn’t exist in 1791, but that doesn’t stop modern opera companies from using it to enhance productions. Perhaps we should apply the same principle to characters and costume.