Revolutionary Acts Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938 / Lynn Mally.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mally, Lynn.

en Book Program, National Endowment for the Humanities Op, Author.

Contributor:

en Book Program, funder.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Amateur theater--Soviet Union--History.

Amateur theater.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (263 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cornell University Press 2000

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Lynn Mally is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. The Revolution Loves the Theater

2. Small Forms on Small Stages

3. From "Club Plays" to the Classics

4. TRAM: The Vanguard of Amateur Art

5. Shock Workers on the Cultural Front

6. Amateurs in the Spectacle State

Conclusion

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-241) and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501706974

1501706977

9781501706981

1501706985

OCLC:

606450650

Access Restriction:

Unrestricted online access