Two Days of Events Celebrate, Examine Stoppard's Coast of Utopia
June 1, 2008
The two-day conference "Utopia's Coasts: Stoppard in New York and Moscow," held on May 22-23, 2008 at the Stanford Humanities Center,
featured the directors of the New York and Moscow productions of Tom Stoppard's three-part dramatization of nineteenth-century intellectual
life: The Coast of Utopia: Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage. Czech-born Tom Stoppard, the British playwright, whose
critically acclaimed epic trilogy broke records last year for the most Tony Awards ever won by a play. It won best play, best director,
best featured actor and actress, and all three design awards for costume, lighting and set.
The international conference included discussions and lectures by Carey Perloff, director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and noted scholars of drama, Russia intellectual history, and American studies. The conference was supported by a major grant of the Stanford Initiative for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) and co-sponsored by CREEES, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL), and the Dean's Office of the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Conference organizer Steven Lee was a dissertation fellow at the Stanford
Humanities Center for 2007-08. He recently received his PhD from Stanford
in Modern Thought and Literature. He will be a post doctoral fellow at NYU
in 2008-09, and an assistant professor of English at UC Berkeley beginning
in 2009. Lee, who describes himself as an "American-Russian comparativist,"
saw both the American and Russian productions of The Coast of Utopia along with Stanford undergraduate Courtney Weaver '08, who graduated in June with a bachelor's
degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures and served as the assistant conference organizer.
On. Thursday evening, May 22, students from the Stanford Drama Department produced and performed a staged reading of one scene from The Coast of Utopia. After the reading, Alexei Borodin and Tony Award-winner Jack O'Brien, the directors of Utopia in Moscow and New York, respectively, compared several video clips selected by Stoppard himself from the two productions. Carey Perloff, artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater, lead a comparative discussion of featured scenes.
On Friday, May 23, an all-day symposium at the Stanford Humanities Center featured leading scholars of Russian intellectual history, drama, and American studies. The first panel introduced the trilogy through images and video of the productions, as well as overviews of public and critical responses. The second panel put the Stoppard script in the context of Russian history post-socialism and the many other depictions of Herzen and his cohort. The third, featuring talks by the two directors, examined the formal aspects of the play and its productions. The final session juxtaposed the New York and Moscow productions to consider visions of utopia and post-utopia today.
Conference Schedule:
"Utopia's Coasts: Stoppard in New York and Moscow"
Thursday-Friday, May 22-23, 2008, Stanford University
Organizer: Steven Lee, Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford Humanities Center
Faculty Sponsor: Gregory Freidin, Slavic Languages and Literature
Administration: Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (Robert Wessling, Associate Director)
Reading, Presentation, and Discussion
Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center, May 22, 2008, 7-9 pm
A staged reading by Stanford Drama students of the opening scene of The Coast of Utopia, followed by a comparison of video footage from the New York and Moscow productions
Discussants:
-Alexei Borodin (Director, The Coast of Utopia, Moscow)
-Jack O'Brien (Director, The Coast of Utopia, New York)
-Carey Perloff (Artistic Director, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco)
Symposium
Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center, May 23, 2008
Breakfast, 9-9:30 am
Welcome: The Play and Project
9:30-10:00 am
Opening Remarks: Shelley Fisher Fishkin (American Studies and English, Stanford)
Project Overview: Steven Lee (Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford)
Session 1: Texts and Contexts
10:00-noon
-Irina Paperno (Slavic Literature and History, Berkeley)
-Anna Muza (Slavic Literature, Berkeley)
-Peggy Phelan (Drama, Stanford)
-Courtney Weaver (Slavic Literature, Stanford)
Lunch (provided for participants), noon-1 pm
Session 2: Staging and Direction
1-3:30 pm
-Robert Orchard (Executive Director, American Repertory Theatre, Boston)
-Alexei Borodin (Director, The Coast of Utopia, Moscow)
-Jack O'Brien (Director, The Coast of Utopia, New York)
-Dustin Condren (Slavic Literature, Stanford)
Discussant: Branislav Jakovljevic (Drama, Stanford)
Click here to listen to the audio recording of Session 2: Staging and Direction
Coffee, 3:30-4 pm
Session 3: Utopia and Post-Utopia "Salvage" versus "Cast Ashore" (Vybroshennye na bereg) 4-6 pm
-Nina Bagdasarova (Philosophy and Sociology, Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University; Fulbright Fellow, Berkeley)
-Thomas Campbell (Slavic Literature, Yale)
-Keith Gessen (Editor-in-Chief, n+1)
-Jessie Labov (Comparative Literature, Stanford)
Click here to listen to the audio recording of Session 3: Utopia and Post Utopia
Closing Remarks: Gregory Freidin (Slavic Literature, Stanford)
Location:
Stanford Humanities Center
Cynthia Haven of the Stanford News Service contributed to this report.