Original novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
Adapted for the stage by Jean-Claude van Itallie
from a translation by Sergei Kobiakoff
August 2 - 30, 2003
Directed by Jenny McConnell
In the winter of 1930, early in the process of writing Master and Margarita, Bulgakov threw his manuscript in the fire and watched it burn.
Written in the darkest days of Stalinist Russia, the work was so controversial that its discovery could mean his complete disappearance. So he wrote secretly, out of a desperate need to finish, but never considered the possibility of its publication. From these events comes one of the most famous aphorisms in the novel: “Manuscripts don’t burn.”
The story follows the Devil on a spring trip to Moscow where he has come to stage his annual ball and wreak havoc on a city that believes in neither Heaven nor Hell. He and his retinue of colorful characters - a demon, a she-vampire and a cigar-smoking cat – are all intent on mischief that will release communist Moscow from its dreary bureaucratic purgatory.
At the center of their mischief is the beautiful and sad Margarita, searching for her lost love, the Master. A writer of immense power, the Master now resides in an insane asylum where he tortures himself over his unfinished novel - a controversial revision of the moral dilemma of Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Christ. Master and Margarita moves through two worlds simultaneously – the height of Stalinist Moscow and Jerusalem two thousand years before. The Devil - tempter, sorcerer and soothsayer - weaves in and out of both worlds.
When the novel was finally published in the 1967, thirty years after Bulgakov’s death, the event was astonishing. It was instantly acclaimed as millions of Russians quoted aphorisms and dedicated passages to memory. Readers savored its originality of language, its savagely comic depiction of Soviet life and its portrayal of magic existing in a familiar world.
The aphorism “manuscripts don’t burn” struck deep into the Soviet mind. It represented the triumph of art, imagination and love over oppression - and not just the oppression of the state, but also the insidious oppression of boredom and complacency.
“A smart quasi-brechtian evening, filled with music-hall flourishes and considerable theatrical ingenuity.”
-Washington City Paper
“There should be no way to begin staging Bulgakov’s hallucinatory work… But rather than shrink from the challenge of the piece the Rorschach troupe appears to savor it… To see Rorschach Theatre’s persistently intriguing staging, an intellectual grab bag of a play…your body may be perspiring, but your mind will be running an irresistible obstacle course without breaking a sweat… A fluid set appears to expand and contract into theatrical niches and unfolding alcoves and at times funnels action into the audience. It’s not exactly theater in the round but its theater over, above and among.”
- Washington Post
PRODUCED BY Randy Baker
FEATURING Lindsay Allen, Chris Davenport, Melissa-Leigh Douglass, Tim Getman, Scott Graham, John Horn, Jason Basinger Linkins, Scott McCormick, Melissa Schwartz, Mark Sullivan, Grady Weatherford
DESIGNED BY Justine Light (costume designer and co-set designer), David C. Ghatan (co-set designer), Matthew Frederick (sound designer), Alex Cooper and Justin Thomas (lighting designers)
STAGE MANAGED BY Jordan Sudermann
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Patrick Crowley
MASTER & MARGARITA was sponsored in part by The Dobranski Foundation.