Alexander Kugel
| Alexander Kugel | |
|---|---|
Portrait by P. Lebedinsky, 1915
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| Born |
Avraam Rafailovich Kugel August 26, 1864 Mozyr, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | October 5, 1928 (aged 64) Leningrad, USSR |
| Occupation | theatre critic and entrepreneur, dramatist, memoirist |
| Years active | 1886-1928 |
| Spouse(s) | Zinaida Kholmskaya |
Alexander Rafailovich Kugel (Russian: Александр Рафаилович Кугель, born Avraam Rafailovich Kugel; 26 August [O.S. 14 August] 1869 1864, — 5 October 1928) was a Russian and Soviet theatre critic and editor, founder of the False Mirror (Krivoye Zerkalo), a popular theatre of parodies.
Alexander Kugel was born in Mozyr, modern Belarus, to rabbi Rafail Mikhaylovich Kugel and his wife Balbana Yakovlevna. Both his parents were respected figures: his father founded the first printing-house in the city; his mother launched the Russian school for Jewish children in Mozyr. Alexander had two brothers, Iona and Nathan, who later became journalists.
In 1886, after graduating from Saint Petersburg University, where he studied law, Kugel started to contribute feuilletons and theatre reviews for the newspapers Peterburgskaya Gazeta, Rus and Den, using the pseudonyms "Homo Novus", "N. Negorev" and "Kvidam". Some of those were later included in his books Untitled (Без заглавия, 1890), Under the Auspice of the Constitution (Под сенью конституции, 1907) and Theatrical Portraits (Театральные портреты, 1923).
In 1897 he started editing the magazine Teatr i Iskusstvo, an illustrated weekly, which soon became the most influential, authoritative and intellectual publication dealing with theatre in Russia. Among the publications that came out as supplements to the magazine were The People of Theatre Dictionary (Словарь сценических деятелей, 1898–1916, 16 issues, letters А—М), and compilations of plays, theatre memoirs and music scores.
A staunch 'starover' in all questions concerning the theatre, Kugel launched a personal crusade against 'symbolism, decadence and all manner of theatrical fable-telling', believing them to have "nothing to do with either art or [Russian] national tradition," according to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Fighting for what he saw as the 'actor's right to express his individuality on stage', he decried the 'director's dictatorship', which renders the actor "a faceless puppet, dancing to somebody else's tune," and soon became the major detractor of all the leading Russian theatre directors, most of all Konstantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold. "Stanislavski, always tetchy about bad reviews, initially treated the critic as a personal enemy, but soon learned to value Kugel's insightful analyses of his directorial schemes and ideas, and even admire this 'useful' opponent," according to the theatre historian Inna Solovyova.
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