Contents: Russian Drama before the Revolution; Soviet Drama 1917-1921; The Civil War in Soviet Drama; Bulgakov's^R The White Guard and Flight; Satirical Comedy and Melodrama; The Plays of Nikolay Erdman; Mayakovsky's The Bedbug and The Bathhouse; Indirect Social Comment; Towards Socialist Realism
Maxim Gorky was dubbed the father of socialist realism in the Soviet period, but he had forged his career as an internationally known novelist and dramatist some three or more decades earlier. Posing questions that Soviet critics found difficult to confront, the author examines the effects of exile and religion on the content and form of the plays as well as the role played by women, and the personal and political implications of motherhood. All sixteen of Gorky's published plays are covered, and the book explores whether this body of work has themes and styles to unify it. While conflict is central to the core political themes and also infiltrates many aspects of the dramatic style (cartoonish and grotesque), other less expected themes and styles emerge. Viewing the post-revolutionary plays as a development of earlier work leads to a question rarely posed: are the plays written by Gorky in the process of defining the new Party-inspired socialist realism in fact less about socialist realist issues of conformity, and more about Gorky's own painful life experience? And what is equally under the microscope is a search for the monumental style frequently associated with socialist realist theatre: the proposed origins of the spatial grandeur in Gorky's plays come as a surprise.
Writers-Files is an important series documenting the work of major dramatists of the last hundred years. Each volume contains a comprehensive checklist of all the writer's plays, with a detailed performance history, excerpted reviews and a selection of th Imprisoned for his revolutionary activities and championed by Checkov, Maxim Gorky ("the bitter") had his first play produced by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902. Chekhov wrote, "Gorky is the first in Russia and the world at large to have expressed contempt and loathing for the petty bourgeoisie and he has done it at the precise moment when Russia is ready for protest." Among Gorky's most important plays are Philistines, The Lower Depths and Barbarians. "Methuen are to be congratulated on launching this series...extremely useful to theatre professionals as well as to students and teachers of drama" (David Bradby, Speech and Drama)
This comprehensive and original survey of Russian theater in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first encompasses the major productions of directors such as Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Tovostonogov, Dodin, and Liubimov that drew from Russian and world literature. It is based on a close analysis of adaptations of literary works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Blok, Bulgakov, Sholokhov, Rasputin, Abramov, and many others."The Modern Russian Stage" is the result of more than two decades of research as well as the author's professional experience working with the Russian director Yuri Liubimov in Moscow and London. The book traces the transformation of literary works into the brilliant stagecraft that characterizes Russian theater. It uses the perspective of theater performances to engage all the important movements of modern Russian culture, including modernism, socialist realism, post-moderninsm, and the creative renaissance of the first decades since the Soviet regime's collapse.
Russian Theater (1963) is a comprehensive study of the main trends in Russian theatre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with its origins in pagan folklore and ritual, it goes on to consider the romantic drama which flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century, the realistic drama of Gogol, Turgenev and their contemporaries, and the beginning of the modernist movement. The foundation of the famous Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 by Stanislavsky and Danchenko led to a remarkable period of innovation in acting, production and stage design which still influences the theatre of the West. Their association of Chekhov and their production of his plays is fully described. The reader is also introduced to the work of such playwrights as Andreyev and Gorky, and to the experiments and ideas of directors like Meeyerhold, Tairov and Vakhtangov. A large part of the book is devoted to a systemic analysis of plays and trends under the Soviets and the rise and fall of the avant-garde theatres and the reasons for their replacement by conservative realism.
Four key new translations of plays (including three previously unpublished works) written at the turn of the 20th century, charting the descent of Russia into revolution Hailed by Chekhov as the voice of his time, Gorky's four plays offer a panoramic view of Russia in the throes of revolution. THE ZYKOVS is set shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Antipa Zykov is a merchant adventurer. His young wife, Pavla is an unworldly convent-bred girl, too weak to realise these ideals in her stormy marriage. EGOR BULYCHOV is set on the eve of revolution as the rich businessman of the title is given power, after the Tsar's abdication. But the songs of the demonstrating crowds outside his window show that his days are numbered. Subtitled 'The Mother' and hugely controversial at the time of its first production VASSA ZHELEZNOVA, is a tragic portrait of a woman with an iron will determined to root out the corruption in her family in order to keep control of the family business. Written during his most religious phase, THE LAST ONES is about a corrupt police chief and his family who face death at the hands of revolutionaries as he tries to fight back by lynching a young man.
An expanded edition of Kinoglasnost that examines the fascinating world of Soviet cinema during the yeas of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s. In Before the Fall, Anna Lawton shows how the reforms that shook the foundations of the Bolshevik state and affected economic and social structures have been reflected in the film industry. A new added chapter provides a commentary on the dramatic changes that marked the beginning of democracy in Russia. Soviet cinema has always been closely connected with national political reality, challenging the conventions of bourgeois society and educating the people. In this pioneering study, Lawton discusses the restructuring of the main institutions governing the industry; the abolition of censorship; the emergence of independent production and distribution systems; the dismantling of the old bureaucratic structures and the implementation of new initiatives. She also surveys the films that remained unscreened for decades for political reasons, films of the new wave that look at the past to search out the truth, and those that record current social ills or conjure up a disquieting image of the future. “What makes Kinoglasnost pre-eminent among current studies of the subject is that sustained attention Lawton pays to changes in the formal organization of Soviet cinema and in the cinema industry.” —Julian Graffy, Sight and Sound “The author constructs a complex, multilayered narrative of a steady and significant movement toward radical change in Soviet society, an account of the growing anxiety and the hope experienced by Russian filmmakers and the intelligentsia.” —Ludmila Z. Pruner, Slavic and East European Journal