A NOTE ON BLISS AS A TITLE:

As any search of the internet will show, the word has been used by a large number of authors of both non-ficion and fictional works (including plays) over the past century or more. This entry limits itself to dramatic works of that name that have been (or may have been) performed in South Africa.

Bliss by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940)[1]

The original text

The play has been described as a “satirical-romantic romp through history”, one that mocks the past, present, and a supposedly “ideal” future.[2] Bulgakov creates in Bliss an everyman’s story of the desire to escape the false promises of the Revolution and the inherent dangers in even thinking such thoughts.

Written in Russian between 1929-1933, usually dated as 1934, it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1966,

Adaptations and translations

Translated into English long after his death, usually as Bliss, inter alia by Bulgakov scholar Carl R. Proffer (published in The Early Plays of Mikhail Bulgakov, edited by Carl R Proffer and Ellendea Proffer, 1972) and by Mirra Ginsburg (published in the volume Flight & Bliss in 1985). The text has often been performed in English since.

The play, with its plotline of Ivan of the Terrible appearing in contemporary Moscow, became the basis for another Bulgakov play, Ivan Vasilievich (1936), which later became the very successful and popular Soviet film Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession (1979).[3]

South African productions

Mid-1970s: A play by this name was apparently performed by the Rhodes University Drama Department. Little information has been found so far, but it seems that it was probably a version of the Proffer translation, with a cast that included Pamela Gien.