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A Midsummer Night's (Different) Dream(s): The Royal Shakespeare Company's 1972 Tour of Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2015

Zoltán Imre
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Extract

Sitting between the First Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and a Vice-President of the Council of State for Cultural and Socialist Education in the official box at the Opera House for the gala première of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” on 23 October and watching those adroit fairies prepare Bottom for his night of love with Titania, I began to get an uneasy feeling that things were not going well as I observed their consternation and embarrassment at the erotic miming before us. This impression was confirmed by their almost monosyllabic comments at my reception during the interval. “Très intéressant” said Gliga, but then words failed him; “très piquant” said [Ion] Blad—a more apposite comment on the scene than perhaps intended, but even this faint praise clearly left other thoughts unexpressed. . . . However, on the following day my Cultural Attaché and later the manager of the Company were called to a 2 1/2-hour meeting with ARIA, the Romanian State impresarios, to hear their “suggestions” for the modification of the “Phallic Bottom” episode; but the manager insisted that he had no power to alter Peter Brook's masterpiece in any way at all and this particular scene in fact remained unaltered during the remainder of the run.

—D. R. Ashe
On 31 October 1972, Derick Rosslyn Ashe, the British ambassador to Romania, sent this strictly confidential report to J. L. Bullard, the head of the East European and Soviet Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. His report was written a few days after the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) had completed its tour in Romania, which took place from 22 to 28 October 1972. Although Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream had originally premiered on 27 August 1970 at Stratford-upon-Avon, the British Council chose it for a tour of Eastern Europe in 1972, and the company played it in Belgrade, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Zagreb, and Warsaw.

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Articles
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Theatre Survey , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 336 - 361
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Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2015 

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References

Endnotes

1. D. R. Ashe to J. L. Bullard, London, 31 October 1972, FCO 34/149, Tour of Royal Shakespeare Company in Eastern Europe, The National Archives, London (hereafter FCO 34/149).

2. The company also mounted the production in Berlin, Munich, Paris, Venice, Milan, Hamburg, Cologne, and Oslo; “Itinerary for the Royal Shakespeare Company,” FCO 34/149.

3. David Selbourne, The Making of “A Midsummer Night's Dream”: An Eye-Witness Account of Peter Brook's Production from First Rehearsal to First Night (London: Methuen, 1982), xxxviii.

4. See, for example, Patrice Pavis, ed., The Intercultural Performance Reader (New York: Routledge, 1996); Julie Holledge and Joanne Tompkins, Women's Intercultural Performance (London: Routledge, 2000); Lo, Jacqueline and Gilbert, Helen, “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis,” TDR: The Drama Review 46.3 (2002): 31–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christopher B. Balme, Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical Syncretism and Post-Colonial Drama (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Balme, Christopher B., “Selling the Bird: Richard Walton Tully's The Bird of Paradise and the Dynamics of Theatrical Commodification,” Theatre Journal 57.1 (2005): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richard Paul Knowles, Theatre & Interculturalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

5. Nicholas, Larraine, “Fellow Travellers: Dance and British Cold War Politics in the Early 1950s,” Dance Research 19.2 (2001): 83–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 93.

6. Barbara Hodgdon, “Looking for Mr. Shakespeare after ‘The Revolution’: Robert Lepage's Intercultural Dream Machine,” in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance, ed. James C. Bulman (London: Routledge, 1996), 68–91, at 70–1. Hodgdon is quoting Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 3, 5.

7. Péter György, “Kádár köpönyege,” in Péter György, Kádár köpönyege (Kádár's mantle) (Budapest: Magvető, 2005), 13–77, at 34, my translation.

8. Ibid., 36, my translation.

9. See, for example, David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); and Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999).

10. David Williamson, Europe and the Cold War, 1945–91 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), 113.

11. Ibid., 115.

12. The Helsinki Accords were signed by thirty-three European states, the United States, and Canada. The immediate result seemed to be more positive for the USSR, as Brezhnev could achieve “Western recognition of the Soviet Empire and an end to all attempts to undermine it” (ibid., 121). At the same time, however, “Helsinki's stress on human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as the increased East–West contact it encouraged, did in the medium term contain the potential for undermining the unpopular Soviet-dominated regimes in Eastern Europe” (ibid.). As a result, arts, culture, and theatre played a very important role in the symbolic struggle between the opposing sides.

13. Miloš Jůzl, “Music and the Totalitarian Regime in Czechoslovakia,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 27.1 (1996): 31–51, at 36.

14. The Brezhnev Doctrine was designed to put an end to democratic liberalization efforts and secure Soviet hegemony inside the Eastern Bloc. In practice, the policy meant that limited independence of communist parties was allowed but satellite states would not be allowed to leave the Warsaw Pact, disturb the Communist Party's monopoly on power in any state, or in any way compromise the cohesiveness of the Eastern Bloc. Implicit in this doctrine was the notion that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved the right to define socialism and capitalism. Following the announcement of the Brezhnev Doctrine late in 1968, numerous treaties were signed between the Soviet Union and its satellite states to reassert these points and further to ensure interstate cooperation. See, for example, David Williamson, Europe and the Cold War, 1945–91 (London, Hodder és Stoughton, 2002), at 135–50.

15. Caute, 1.

16. Ibid., 4.

17. See, for example, Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore és London, John Hopkins University Press, 1991), at 1–26, 127–28.

18. Caute, 6. See, for example, Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?; and Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

19. Nicholas, 93.

20. Soviet authorities deliberately chose the Russian Bolshoi Ballet, for instance. As Nicholas notes, “Ballet seems antithetical to the Western, militaristic image of the Soviet Union and yet a brilliant performance can also convey power”; ibid., 97.

21. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, 1.

22. György, 15, my translation.

23. The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anticommunist advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1962, World Marxist Review published an article entitled “Who Financed Anti-Communism?” by Ernst Henri that revealed that the CIA and the Ford Foundation were the secret financial backers of the CCF. In 1966, the New York Times published an article exposing the CIA as secretly funding the CCF's British magazine, Encounter. Finally, in 1966, it was revealed (first by the New York Times and later by Ramparts and other mainstream news outlets) that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the CCF through organizations such as the Ford Foundation. The CCF was subsequently renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries. See, for example, Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? (New York and London: Routledge, 2013); Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?; and Berghahn.

24. Encounter was a literary magazine published in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol and ceased publication in 1991. The largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal received covert funding from the CIA after the CIA and MI6 discussed the founding of an Anglo-American left-of-center publication intended to counter the idea of cold-war neutrality. See, for example, Frances Stonor Saunders, “How the CIA Plotted against Us,” New Statesman, 12 July 1999, 29–30.

25. See more in Robert Burstow, “The Limits of Modernist Art as a ‘Weapon of the Cold War’: Reassessing the Unknown Patron of the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner,” Oxford Art Journal 20.1 (1997): 68–80.

26. In connection with the initial setup of the British Council's Soviet Relations Committee's oversight of cultural exchanges with the USSR, Larraine Nicholas pointed out that “although the British Council was obliged by its Charter to avoid political issues, the Soviet Relations Committee was set up to work very closely with the Foreign Office”; Nicholas, 98. Though the Soviet Relations Committee had been established in 1955, its working method was still similar in the 1970s.

27. “Hal Rogers, Company Manager, House-Father, and Stage Manager for a Dream,” in Peter Brook's Production of William Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” for the Royal Shakespeare Company: Authorized Acting Edition, ed. Glenn Loney (Stratford-upon-Avon: Royal Shakespeare Company & Dramatic Publishing Company, 1974) (hereafter Loney), 99–102, at 99–100.

28. E. V. Vines to R. P. Martin, Budapest, 4 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

29. E. V. Vines to J. A. Dobbs, Moscow, 13 November 1972, BW 1/606, Drama Tours: The Royal Shakespeare Company's Tour to Eastern Europe, 1972: Reports, The National Archives, London (hereafter BW 1/606).

30. Charles Marowitz, “Brook: From Marat/Sade to Midsummer Night's Dream,” New York Times, 13 September 1970, D3.

31. Ronald Bryden, “A Drama Critic Introduces Peter Brook,” in Loney, 16–20, at 17.

32. S. Melchinger, “Ein Sommernachtstraum,” Theater Heute, 10 October 1970, at 8, my translation.

33. Péter Molnár Gál, “Szentivánéji álom” (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Népszabadság, 19 October 1972, 2, my translation.

34. Clive Barnes, “Historic Staging of Dream,” New York Times, 28 August 1970, 15.

35. Dennis Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 183.

36. Ibid., 184.

37. Ibid.

38. Milton Shulman, “Peter Brook's Flying Circus: A Dream of a Show,” Evening Standard, 11 June 1971, 14.

39. Jay L. Halio, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 57.

40. Ibid., 59.

41. László Seregi, “Szex és cirkusz” (Sex and circus), Egyetemi Élet, 8 November 1972, at 4, my translation.

42. Shulman, 4; and Seregi, 4.

43. Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare, 187.

44. Béla Mátrai-Betegh, “A Royal Shakespeare Company vendégjátéka” (The visit of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre), Magyar Nemzet, 20 October 1972, 3, my translation.

45. “MSND at the Drama Desk: Peter Brook and Major Players Discuss the Production in New York,” in Loney, 23–33, at 25.

46. “Sally Jacobs Discusses Evolution of Sets, Costumes and Props,” in Loney, 45–51, at 47.

47. His definition of theatre, which he offered in the first paragraph of his 1968 book, is still popular—partly because it focuses on theatre as activity rather than place; partly because it draws attention to the fact that it is possible to create theatre in any place and in any situation; and partly because it suggests that theatre could be liberated from its institutional structure and conventional expectations. See Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: Penguin, 1968), 9.

48. Irit Rogoff, “Studying Visual Culture,” in The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London: Routledge, 1998), 22.

49. This is absolutely clear when we compare it to Karin Beyer's European Dream (see Janelle Reinelt, “Performing Europe: Identity Formation for a ‘New’ Europe,” in Theatre, History, and National Identities, ed. Helka Mäkinen, S. E. Wilmer, and W. B. Worthen [Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2001], 227–56) and to Robert Lepage's 1993 Dream at the Royal National Theatre (see Hodgdon, 68–91; and Knowles, Rick, “From Dream to Machine: Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, and the Contemporary Shakespearean Director as [Post]Modernist,” Theatre Journal 50.2 [1998]: 189–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

50. Dennis Kennedy, The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 80–1.

51. C. R. Hewer to Ms. Ildikó Gedényi, Budapest, 10 May 1972, FCO 34/149.

52. C. R. Hewer to Director, Drama and Music Department, British Council, London, 2 May 1972, FCO 34/149.

53. C. R. Hewer to Director, Drama and Music Department, British Council, London, 5 May 1972, FCO 34/149.

54. Ashe to Bullard, 31 October 1972.

55. It was a difficult business, however. Alec Douglas-Home wrote in a general report titled “Cultural Policy towards Hungary,” which was distributed among the British representatives of the region, “We should take care not to push our ideas too hard for fear of Soviet reaction. Our policy has always been to make discrete offers of help and leave it to the recipient country to decide how much they feel they can safely accept. East Europeans are adept at knowing when and how to draw the line, and our experiences with Hungary confirm this”; Alec Douglas-Home, “Cultural Policy towards Hungary,” 1 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

56. D. R. Ashe to D. N. Brinson, 11 July 1972, FCO 34/149.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Donald Logan to J. L. Bullard, London, 15 November 1972, FCO 34/149.

60. Peter Brook's dedication in the program of the Eastern European tour, Production File: Midsummer Night's Dream (Brook), 1972, Archive and Library Reading Room, Blythe House, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

61. Chtiguel, Olga F.l, “Without Theatre, the Czechoslovak Revolution Could Not Have Been Won,” TDR: The Drama Review 34.3 (1990): 88–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 89.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. The Prague Spring of 1968 was a political liberalization that included reforms that granted additional rights to the citizens in an act of democratization and partial decentralization of the economy. It was a delayed reaction to Nikita Khrushchev's reforms in the USSR earlier that decade. William Luers notes that it “was led by communists who, like the Khrushchev reformers, believed that Soviet-style socialism could have a human face, could be reformed and could be made to work… . So it was during the period between 1964 and 1968 that reform trends quickened in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet reformers who survived Khrushchev and watched the rise and the fall of the Prague Spring in 1968 knew that the end of Dubček also meant the end of their already languishing reform movement under Brezhnev”; Luers, William H., “Czechoslovakia: Road to Revolution,” Foreign Affairs 69.2 (1990): 77–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 79.

65. See, for example, Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Williamson, ibid., at 147–56.

66. Chtiguel, 91.

67. As Olga Chtiguel remarked, “The consequences of the so-called normalization process, designed to return the country to the Soviet orbit, were disastrous. Political and cultural purges resulted in exclusion of half a million people from their jobs. Thousands were imprisoned. Once again, socialist realism was installed as the ruling aesthetic model”; ibid.

68. At the time, these theatres were well known not only in Czechoslovakia but also in the West. By 1972, Krejča was also acknowledged as “a leading director not only in Czechoslovakia but in Europe as a whole; his [Za Branou] ensemble has toured throughout Europe, and he has guest-directed in such centers as Brussels, Vienna, Stockholm, and Salzburg”; Burian, Jarka M., “Art and Relevance: The Small Theatres of Prague, 1958–1970,” Educational Theatre Journal 23.3 (1971): 229–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 246. On Czech theatres in the period, see, for example, Burian, Jarka, “Otomar Krejča's Use of the Mask,” TDR: The Drama Review 16.3 (1972): 47–56Google Scholar; and Beck, Dennis C., “Divadlo Husa na Provázku and the ‘Absence’ of Czech Community,” Theatre Journal 48.4 (1996): 419–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. E. V. Vines to R. P. Martin, Budapest, 7 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

70. E. V. Vines to John Argles, London, 2 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

71. Vines to Martin, 7 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

72. J. D. K. Argles to E. V. Vines, London, 4 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

73. Ibid.

74. E. V. Vines to D. F. B. Le Breton, Budapest, 9 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid. Vines wrote to John Argles, “I have told Tim Williams that we have had an informal word with Radio Free Europe about the background to all this”; Vines to Argles, 2 August 1972.

77. Vines to Le Breton, 9 August 1972. On 2 August 1972, a very brief notice appeared in the Daily Telegraph titled “Theatrical Gesture.” It referred to the fact that Brook “has taken an unusual step of dedicating the tour to another theatre company. Unhappily the dedication is to a company which no longer exists. This is the Za Branou Theatre of Prague which, until the repressions of the Husák regime, had been recognised not only as Czechoslovakia's leading theatre but also as a group of world stature. Alas, after increasing hardships, the theatre was disbanded by government decree on June 10 this year”; Daily Telegraph, 2 August 1972, 4.

78. Vines to Martin, 4 August 1972.

79. I. H. Williams to R. P. Martin, Budapest, 11 August 1972, FCO 34/149.

80. T. Frank Brenchley to J. L. Bullard, London, 1 December 1972, FCO 34/149.

81. Ashe to Bullard, 31 October 1972.

82. Marcus Ferrar, “Rumania's Theatrical Troubles,” Radio Free Europe (Szabad Európa Rádió), 15 February 1973, RL/BA FEB 15 1112/1973, Open Society Archives, Budapest.

83. D. S. L. Dodson to J. L. Bullard, London, 14 November 1972, FCO 34/149. Dodson was under the surveillance of the Hungarian Secret Police, who suspected him of spying due to his rank at the British Embassy; Dodson's file, ABTL 2.2.1. OP. NYT. III/4.5/141, Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate Dodson's file.

84. Even in these societies, however, various tactics and strategies were used to negotiate between censors and censored. For example, to get beyond the censors, “two or more parallel agencies could be played against each other”; Baumrin, Seth, “Ketmanship in Opole: Jerzy Grotowski and the Price of Artistic Freedom,” TDR: The Drama Review 53.4 (2009): 49–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 63. “Ketmanship” was “the ability of artists and scientists to deceive the authorities” (ibid., 61), taking advantage of “the blind spots of censorship, where the spaces of official and personal relationship overlapped”; Setje-Eilers, Margaret, “'Wochenend und Sonnenschein’: In the Blind Spots of Censorship at the GDR's Cultural Authorities and the Berliner Ensemble,” Theatre Journal 61.3 (2009): 363–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 364. It also refers to using real and/or false “allusions” (ibid., 379) and “the strategy of the false white dogs” (Beck, 428). Dennis Beck provides some context in describing a tactic developed by Borivoj Srba and his successor Petr Oslzly of the Janacek Academy that Oslzly called “the tactic of the small white dogs,” a nod to Goethe's Faust. As Beck explains, it “consisted of including in a list of proposed works, all of which the dramaturg knows to be unacceptable, a play or plays so controversial as to constitute blatant provocation. The watchdogs of culture eagerly hunted the yapping white dog running ahead of the pack, killed it, and then relaxed, content that they had purged the season of rabid subversion. The effectiveness of this tactic was enhanced by party pressure on the committees to demonstrate their critical rigor.”; Beck, 422, 428.

85. Bradley, Laura, “GDR Theatre Censorship: A System in Denial,” German Life and Letters 59.1 (2006): 151–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 151.

86. Ibid., 156. The Soviet Union was similar in this respect. As Valeria D. Stelmakh points out, censorship is “a social system with powerful control over information and reading, restricting the public's access to the world's various cultures”; Valeria D. Stelmakh, “Reading in the Context of Censorship in the Soviet Union,” Libraries & Culture 36.1 (2001): 143–51, at 143. Soviet censorship was not also restrained by any provisions of law and hence “was arbitrary and not accountable to anyone”; ibid., 144. It was done, for the most part, before publicity and was performed in secret and anonymously. Censorship in the Soviet period was able to become an all-pervasive, total system only because of “the interaction between state bodies and the various social groups due to the self-censorship within the society” (ibid.).

87. Beck, 428.

88. Maliţa, Liviu, “Ceauşescu színházba megy” (Ceauşescu goes to the theatre), Színház 41.5 (2009): 49–54Google Scholar, at 51, my translation.

89. Maliţa, Liviu, “Literature and Red Ideology: Romanian Plays on Religious Themes in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 8.23 (2009): 82–106Google Scholar, at 82.

90. Ibid., 83.

91. Ibid.

92. Anneli Meier, “Production of Gogol's ‘The Inspector General’ Stopped,” Radio Free Europe, 10 October 1972, 811, F-96, Open Society Archives, Budapest.

93. Michael Simmons, “Russians Make Scene over Gogol in Romania,” Financial Times, 12 October, 1972, p. 8. Paper clipping found at Radio Free Europe, 13 October 1972, 811, F-63, Open Society Archives, Budapest.

94. “Romanians Close Down Russian Classic,” Radio Free Europe, 14 October 1972, 811, F-64, Open Society Archives, Budapest.

95. Ferrar.

96. Ashe to Bullard, 31 October 1972.

97. Ibid.

98. Natalia Stancu, “Midsummer Night's Dream,” Scînteia, 27 October, 1972, in English translation in BW 1/606.

99. Radu Popescu, “The Royal Shakespeare Company: The Midsummer Night's Dream,” Romania Libera, 20 October 1972, in English translation in BW 1/606.

100. Logan to Bullard, 15 November 1972.

101. Elisaveta Sotirova, “The Royal Shakespeare Company in Bulgaria,” Otechestven Front, 5 November 1972, in English translation in FCO 34/149.

102. Dimiter Kanushev, “The RSC in Sofia: A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Literaturen Front, 9 November 1972, in English translation in FCO 34/149. In other countries, one of the arguments mentioned most often was that “the performance is stuffed mostly with Brook's tricks and there was no space left for good old Shakespeare”; Mátrai-Betegh, 3, my translation. In Budapest, a Hungarian critic wrote that “somewhat less music inserted, somewhat less acrobatics, would have been more”; Tamás Barabás, “Szentivánéji álom: A Royal Shakespeare Company vendégjátéka” (A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Visit of the Royal Shakespeare Company), Esti Hírlap, 18 October 1972, 3, my translation.

103. Brenchley to Bullard, 1 December 1972.

104. Ibid.

105. Ibid.

106. R. P. Martin to J. D. K. Argles, London, 28 November 1972, FCO 34/149.

107. One of the reviewers, György Csapó, mentioned in his article that a reader had sent a letter to the editor of his newspaper. In it, Mrs. Dr. P. G. had asked “did you notice that the English actors exercised sex-propaganda?” Csapó had replied that “sex does not need propaganda,” adding that “I did not notice the sex-propaganda. Moreover, I did not notice any kind of propaganda in their playing. All I could concentrate on was Shakespeare. Purely.” György Csapó, “A meztelenségről” (On nudity), Ország Világ, 15 November 1972, 4, my translation.

108. E. V. Vines to D. R. Ashe, Bucharest, 20 November 1972, FCO 34/149.

109. Ibid.

110. Logan to Bullard, 15 November 1972.

111. From Warsaw, T. Frank Brenchley reported to J. L. Bullard that “the relatively small number of tickets made available to the public sold out in fifteen minutes”; Brenchley to Bullard, 1 December 1972. Gomulka tried to build national unity in Poland after 1956 while adhering to Soviet guidelines: “On the international stage, Poland appeared to follow Khrushchev's lead, yet within the nation, Gomulka was comparatively open. To accomplish its contradictory program of limited freedom, the PZPR used artists and intellectuals to display Poland's new openness, while simultaneously adhering to Soviet ideology. PZPR enforced cultural directives via SB officers integrated throughout the state, regional, and municipal chains of command” (Baumrin, 61). The authorities' demonstration of openness for the benefit of the international community involved sending theatre people abroad (Grotowski, for instance) and receiving foreign companies and artists in Poland.

112. Martin to Argles, 28 November 1972.

113. The disappointment of a Hungarian theatre lover was described in an article in Népszava. Mihály Koroda complained that he had wanted to buy a ticket but could not, although he had tried at the theatre and through the Ministry of Culture, the Hungarian Pen Club, and other institutions. Finally he went to the theatre and sneaked in at the interval. Mihály Koroda, “Szentivánéji varázslat” (Midsummer night's magic), Népszava, 24 October 1972, 4, my translation.

114. Koltai, Tamás, “Hogyan játsszunk színházat a Royal Shakespeare Company vendégszereplése után?” (How can we play theatre after the visit of the Royal Shakespeare Company?), Új írás [13].2 (1973): 100–5Google Scholar, my translation.

115. The directives issued by the Hungarian Communist Party declared that “the political responsibility of the director, the manager, and the artistic director of the theatre involves the control over the ideological-political correctness of the dramaturgical works and the staging, and punishing the mistakes committed on these fields”; quoted in Erzsébet Bogácsi, Rivaldazárlat (Stage control) (Budapest: Dovin, 1991), 160, my translation. Through these directives, not only the members of the apparatus—the council and ministry members—but also the leaders of the theatres could use (self-)censorship. As a result, as Sándor Révész explains, “It was not only about censorship, but about the central ownership of the entire theatre structure. The culture-politics selected not with the eyes of the censor, but with the eyes of the owner”; Sándor Révész, Aczél és korunk (Aczél and our age) (Budapest: Sík, 1997), 271, my translation.

116. Both, Béla, “Néhány észrevétel a színházi vitához” (Some remarks on the theatre debate), Új írás [13].5 (1973): 110–13Google Scholar, my translation.

117. Paranoia worked on both sides of the wall. As Brenchley's report from Warsaw shows, what was not suspicious could become so in certain circumstances: “Much in evidence behind the scenes was a couple of young Czechs, a boy and a girl, who appeared to be theatre enthusiasts and about 16 years old. They had tried to see the production earlier in the tour, at Budapest, but missed it. They popped up again in Warsaw, and the company took them under their wing. The Council warned the Manager against relying on their being merely what they seemed, but it must be admitted that they really did appear to be the soul of innocence. The girl spoke freely about her links with the Za Branou theatre in Prague, and with its director, Otomar Krejča, and about the trials of life in Czechoslovakia today. Some of us were still, with our suspicious mind, left with a few lingering doubts, based mainly on the ease with which they seemed to have been able to cross frontiers”; Brenchley to Bullard, 1 December 1972, FCO 34/149.

118. Jůzl, 31.

119. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Calderon Press, 1997), 283.

120. Ibid., 284; emphasis in original.

121. E. V. Vines to Donald Logan, Budapest, 12 December 1972, FCO 34/149.

122. Logan to Bullard, 15 November 1972, FCO 34/149.

123. Gaddis, 283.

124. Ibid., 287.

125. Ibid., 283.

126. Vines to Logan, 12 December 1972, FCO 34/149.

127. Vines to Dobbs, 13 November 1972, FCO 34/149.

128. Ibid.

129. Magyar Távirati Iroda, “Budapesten szerepel a Royal Shakespeare Company,” Népszava, 17 October 1972, 2, my italics and my translation.

130. Seregi, 4, my translation.