ABSTRACT
The Art Theatre’s production of Ostrovsky’s The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)—a poetic fantasy on traditional Russian folk themes set in a mythical land ruled by Tsar Berendey-embodied in more exotic form some of the antinomies of the Theatre’s previous work. Snegurochka, the personification of purity and chastity (as well as iciness) begs for the warmth of love and, as a consequence, is melted by the sun. In response, her potential lover drowns himself. Oppositions here find expression in Spring versus Winter (who are personified in the play), Heat versus Cold, Youth versus Age, and the world of poetic imagination opposed to that of ‘reality’. The line initiated by this production, whose staging forms commenced from the point where fantastic elements in The Sunken Bell had left off, was continued in Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird, in 1908.
