In this monumental work, Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky offer a panoramic history of Soviet theater from the Bolshevik Revolution to the eventual collapse of the USSR. Making use of more than eighty years’ worth of archival documentation, the authors celebrate in words and pictures a vital, living art form that remained innovative and exciting, growing, adapting, and flourishing despite harsh, often illogical pressures inflicted upon its creators by a totalitarian government. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the subject ever to be published in the English language.
During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, amateur theater groups sprang up in cities across the country. Workers, peasants, students, soldiers, and sailors provided entertainment ranging from improvisations to gymnastics and from propaganda sketches to the plays of Chekhov. In Revolutionary Acts, Lynn Mally reconstructs the history of the amateur stage in Soviet Russia from 1917 to the height of the Stalinist purges. Her book illustrates in fascinating detail how Soviet culture was transformed during the new regime's first two decades in power. Of all the arts, theater had a special appeal for mass audiences in Russia, and with the coming of the revolution it took on an important role in the dissemination of the new socialist culture. Mally's analysis of amateur theater as a space where performers, their audiences, and the political authorities came into contact enables her to explore whether this culture emerged spontaneously "from below" or was imposed by the revolutionary elite. She shows that by the late 1920s, Soviet leaders had come to distrust the initiatives of the lower classes, and the amateur theaters fell increasingly under the guidance of artistic professionals. Within a few years, state agencies intervened to homogenize repertoire and performance style, and with the institutionalization of Socialist Realist principles, only those works in a unified Soviet canon were presented.
This is the first book to explore the world of the theatre in Russia after Stalin. Through his work at the Moscow Art Theatre, Anatoly Smeliansky is in a key position to analyse contemporary events on the Russian stage and he combines this first-hand knowledge with valuable archival material, some published here for the first time, to tell a fascinating and important story. Smeliansky chronicles developments from 1953 and the rise of a new Soviet theatre, and moves through the next four decades, highlighting the social and political events which shaped Russian drama and performance. The book also focuses on major directors and practitioners, including Yury Lyubimov, Oleg Yefremov, and Lev Dodin, among others, and contains a chronology, glossary of names, and informative illustrations.
Soviet Jewish theater in a world of moral compromise / Susan Tumarkin Goodman -- The political context of Jewish theater and culture in the Soviet Union / Zvi Gitelman -- Habima and "Biblical theater" / Vladislav Ivanov -- Yiddish constructivism : the art of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater / Jeffrey Veidlinger -- Art and theater / Benjamin Harshav -- Habima and Goset : an illustrated chronicle
A latecomer continually hampered by government control and interference, the Russian theatre seems an unlikely source of innovation and creativity. Yet, by the middle of the nineteenth century, it had given rise to a number of outstanding playwrights and actors, and by the start of the twentieth century, it was in the vanguard of progressive thinking in the realms of directing and design. Its influence throughout the world was pervasive: Nikolai Gogol', Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gor'kii remain staples of repertories in every language, the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavskii, Vsevolod Meierkhol'd and Mikhail Chekhov continue to inspire actors and directors, while designers still draw on the graphics of the World of Art group and the Constructivists. What distinguishes Russian theater from almost any other is the way in which these achievements evolved and survived in ongoing conflict or cooperation with the State. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Russian Theatre covers the history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on individual actors, directors, designers, entrepreneurs, plays, playhouses and institutions, Censorship, Children’s Theater, Émigré Theater, and Shakespeare in Russia. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian Theatre.
Although by writers better known for their verse and narrative prose, the plays of the Symbolists were not intended, like the dramatic poems of the Romantics, for the study rather than the stage. Instead, they are highly theatrical creations in a new style that demanded a new style of production. Meyerhold played a decisive role in the new Symbolist theatre and it was his production of Blok’s The Puppet Show in Komissarzhevskaya’s Theatre that launched the new direction in Russian drama. Among the works collected here are the plays The Puppet Show and The Rose and the Cross (Blok), The Triumph of Death (Sologub), The Comedy of Alexis and The Venetian Madcaps (Kuzmin), Thamyris Kitharodos (Annensky), and The Tragedy of Judas (Remizov) and essays by Briusov, Blok, Ivanov, Bely, Sologub, and Andreyev. Rounding out this essential anthology are Michael Green’s general introduction, as well as insightful prefaces for each writer, placing the plays and essays into their cultural and historical contexts.
This is the most comprehensive study available of the popular theater that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift examines the origins and significance of the new "people's theaters" that were created for the lower classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change. Swift illuminates many aspects of the story of these popular theaters—the cultural politics and aesthetic ambitions of theater directors and actors, state censorship politics and their role in shaping the theatrical repertoire, and the theater as a vehicle for social and political reform. He looks at roots of the theaters, discusses specific theaters and performances, and explores in particular how popular audiences responded to the plays.
"Jeffrey Veidlinger relates a fascinating and little-known piece of history. . . . [He] distills a remarkable amount of research into a pithy, well-turned account that will interest readers of cultural and political history." —Publishers Weekly Drawing from newly available archives, Jeffrey Veidlinger uses the dramatic story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies. Published with the generous support of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation.
