Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on October 28, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a reading and discussion with Oksana Bulgakova. Moderated by Mark Lipovetsky.
Two titans of early twentieth century theater meet in a Baroque castle that once belonged to a Catholic archbishop. Max Reinhardt, a great conjurer of the state, dazzles audiences with breathtaking spectacles—cathedrals turned into theaters, city squared transformed into dreamscapes. His art is pure enchantment, a grand illusion. In star contrast stands Konstantin Stanislavsky, who stripped the stage of artifice, insisting on truth and genuine experience. Both men built private theaters, sustained by the generosity of wealthy patrons. Both would see their worlds upended by revolutions, the loss of artistic independence, and the rising tide of commercial dreams.
Oksana Bulgakova’s one-act play belongs to a trilogy exploring Russian and German visions of theater, cinema, and the actor’s role amid the political storms of the twentieth century. It unfolds as a dialogue of ghosts: conversations never spoken, questions never answered. What might Reinhardt and Stanislavsky has said to each other, had they lingered on that magic mountain? For whom do they perform? Who truly needs theater? And is theater, in the end, necessary at all?
The reading will be in Russian. The Q&A will be in English and Russian.
Oksana Bulgakowa, Professor Emerita of Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany). She published such ground-breaking books on Russian and German cinema as “Sergei Eisenstein: Three Utopias. Architectural Drafts for a Film Theory” (1996), “The Adventures of Doctor Mabuse in the Country of Bolsheviks” (1995), “Sergej Eisenstein. A Biography” (German Edition 1998; English edition 2003, Russian edition 2017), “The Factory of Gestures” (2005/2023), “The Voice and Media” (2012), “Voice as the Cultural Phenomenon” (2015), “Things in Film: A Silent Monologue, Hidden Memory” (2021), “The exhibition ‘Moscow-Berlin/ Berlin—Moscow. 1900–1950’: A told and Untold History of a Museum Blockbuster that we have to Remember because We Prefer to Forget” (2023). She directed films, curated exhibits and developed multimedia projects. She taught at the Humboldt University and Free University, Berlin, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the International Film School in Cologne and at the School of Arts and Design, Shanghai University of Engineering Science.
