Reclaiming the stage: Amateur theater-studio audiences in the late Soviet era

Slavic Review

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 398-423

  Costanzo, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34248110301     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2501856     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. See Aleksandr Gershkovich, Teatr na Taganke 1964-1984 (Benson, Vt., 1986). Ten Days that Shook the World (Desiat' dnei, kotorye potriasli mir) premiered in 1965.
2. Lars Kleberg discusses the debates surrounding techniques for analyzing audiences in the 1920s but offers little discussion of the actual audience responses. See "The Nature of the Soviet Audience: Theatrical Ideology and Audience Research in the 1920s," in Robert Russell and Andrew Barratt, eds., Russian Theatre in the Age of Modernism (Basingstoke, Eng., 1990), 172-95.
3. A study of more recent audiences is based on incomplete data from a 1967-1968 survey of urban professional theater spectators conducted by the Soviet Ministry of Culture. The authors of the study acknowledge that spectators' responses were limited by the nature of the questionnaire. In addition, while asking respondents why they did not attend the theater more often, the study asks neither why they attended nor what they enjoyed about the performances. See Mikhail Deza and Mervyn Matthews, "Soviet Theater Audiences," Slavic Review 34, no. 4 (December 1975): 716-30.
4. See also G. Dadamianon, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia zritelei dramaticheskikh teatrov: Metodicheskie rekomendatsii (Leningrad, 1975).
5. See, for example, Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, enl. ed. (Durham and London, 1990);
6. or Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (New York, 1992). Neither work focuses on theater.
7. Examples of this approach to theater audiences include Gershkovich; L. P. Solntseva, "Novye formy vzaimodeistviia so zritelem v molodezhnykh teatrakh," in Narodnoe tvorchestvo v kul'ture razvitogo sotsialisticheskogo obshchestva (Moscow, 1984), 100-117;
8. A. P. Shul'pin, "O prirode liubitel'skogo teatra," Narodnoe tvorchestvo v kul'ture razvitogo sotsialisticheskogo obshchestva ibid., 84-100.
9. Alma Law has written extensively on Soviet theater. See her "The Soviet Theatre in the 1980s: Amateur and Studio Performances," in Robert Finlay, Philip Hill, and Bela Kiralyfalvi, ed., Theatre Perspectives No. 2: Contemporary Russian and Polish Theatre and Drama (Washington D.C., 1980), 21-28;
10. and Law, "Some Observations on the Soviet Theater Today," Soviet Union 12 (1985): 131-36;
11. Soviet Theatre in Transition: The Politics of Theatre in the 1980s (Washington D.C., 1984).
12. James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (Berkeley, 1993).
13. In this context, "patrons" refer to ticket holders rather than to the influential "patrons" who used their positions in politics and the art world to protect studios. The latter were critical to a studio's ability to gain permission to stage controversial productions, but their function was different from that of average theatergoers.
14. Comment books were more common, for instance, at art exhibits, but they have also received little scholarly attention. John Dunlop makes a brief observation regarding the content of comment books at a late 1970s exhibit of the works of Il'ia Glazunov, a Russian nationalist painter. See John Dunlop, The New Russian Nationalism (New York, 1985), 13.
15. One analysis of prerevolutionary audiences can be found in Gary Thurston, "The Impact of Russian Popular Theatre, 1886-1915," Journal of Modern History 55 (June 1983): 237-67.
16. "Fringe" theater refers to experimental theater that developed as an alternative to the official Edinburgh Festival in the 1950s. Fringe theater groups today include small-scale professional, amateur, and student groups which perform both new and classic drama. See William Packard, David Pickering, and Charlotte Savidge, eds., Dictionary of the Theatre (New York, 1988), 187.
17. For overviews of this period, see Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theater 1905-1932, trans. Roxane Pernar, ed. Lesley Milne (New York, 1988);
18. Iu. A. Dmitriev and K. L. Rudnitskii, eds., Istoriia russkogo sovetskogo dramaticheskogo teatra: Kniga pervaia 1917-1945-e gody (Moscow, 1984);
19. Iu. A. Dmitriev, ed., Istoriia russkogo sovetskogo dramaticheskogo teatra: Kniga vtoraia 1945-1980-e gody (Moscow, 1987).
20. By the early 1980s, ambitious professionals were also forming "studios." See Law, "The Soviet Theatre in the 1980s."
21. On TRAM, see Lynn Mally, "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Youth Theater TRAM," Slavic Review 51, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 411-30,
22. and Mally, "Autonomous Theater and the Origins of Socialist Realism: The 1932 Olympiad of Autonomous Art," Russian Review 52 (April 1993): 198-212.
23. Surveys of amateur theater include A. E. Porvatov, Ot "zhivoi gazety" do teatra-studii (Moscow, 1989);
24. Alyona Solntseva, "Transition: The Theater-Studio Movement," trans. Vladimir Klimenko, Theater 20 (March 1989): 21-27;
25. Eugene Anthony Swift, "Fighting the Germs of Disorder: The Censorship of Russian Popular Theater, 1888-1917," Russian History 18 (Spring 1991): 1-49;
26. and Thurston, "The Impact of Russian Popular Theatre."
27. The conflict here was not merely between disgruntled amateurs and professionals guarding their perquisites. That narrow understanding ignores the state's role in supporting professional artistic activities. The final decision to create a new professional theater was made, albeit rarely, at the level of the USSR Council of Ministers.
28. Carol J. Avins, "Gor'kij on the Soviet Reader as Interpreter," Russian Literature 24 (1988): 451-64.
29. In theater, similar attitudes persisted in some circles into the late 1960s. In fact, participation in amateur theater was considered a means to advance the general public from ignorance to enlightenment. See, for instance, "Ideinost', splochennost', masterstvo," Klub i khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel'nost', August 1968, 12.
30. Narodnoe khoziaistvo S.S.S.R. v 1973 g. (Moscow, 1974), 701, 39.
31. Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon, exp. ed. (Berkeley, 1991);
32. Martin Walker, The Waking Giant: The Soviet Union under Gorbachev (New York, 1986).
33. Kniga otzyvov [hereafter K.o.], Na Krasnoi Presne archive.
34. Valerii Beliakovich, interview, Moscow, 19 October 1991; Iurii Zaitsev, interview, Moscow, 22 January 1991. All interviews, except where noted, were conducted by the author and are in the author's possession. In the former Komsomol archive, I also found a comment book of an agitbrigad on tour in the Arctic in 1969. All comments in it were written by an official representative of each particular audience. Tsentr khraneniia dokumentov molodezhnykh organizatsii, f. 1, op. 39, d. 207a (Materialy ob organizatsii agitpoezdov TsK LKSM Moldavii), ll. 1-36. No direct evidence exists, but I suspect that the studio comment books, in contrast, were an effort to allow individuals to speak for themselves; nevertheless, the practice of official designees continued in some cases.
35. Beliakovich, for instance, admitted that he often fabricated data on his various reports. Beliakovich, interview, 19 October 1991. Attendance figures for individual amateur troupes have not survived in either local or central archives.
36. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive. The theater's post-1975 site accommodated eighty-seven seats for performances of Romeo i Dzhul'etta and was considerably smaller than its original hall at the Palace of Pioneers. Plany zritel'nogo zala, Na Krasnoi Presne archive. See also K.o., Na Iugo-Zapade archive; K.o., Subbota archive; K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive (formerly the studio Na Ulitse Chekhova).
37. On the amount of leisure time, see V. Patrushev, "Iskushenie dosugom," Klub i khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel'nost', September 1984, 14.
38. On theater attendance, see Deza and Matthews, "Soviet Theater Audiences," 719;
39. G. Dadamianom, "Teatr i zritel'," Klub i khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel'nost', July 1977, 25;
40. and Law, Soviet Theatre in Transition, 7.
41. Zaitsev, interview, 22 January 1991.
42. In 1984, a comment written to Na Iugo-Zapade by the "students and teachers of the Patrice Lumumba University of Friendship," an institute for students of friendly foreign governments, said, "[We] want to note again that the collective of the theater-studio consistently carries out the decisions of the TsK KPSS in the sphere of culture directed at improving the ideological-political, cultural, and moral level of the Soviet people." K.o., Na Iugo-Zapade archive. This comment may have functioned as ongoing propaganda for the students by the faculty.
43. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive.
44. K.o., Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
45. Letter, undated, Na Iugo-Zapade archive. The word shtamp also suggests political conformity.
46. Letter, 19 February 1984, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
47. Letter, undated, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
48. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
49. Boris Vasil'ev, "Ne streliaite belykh lebedei," in Izbrannoe: V dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1988), 1:201-359. By 1991 Malyshchitskii, the founder and director of LIIZhT, no longer had a copy of the script.
50. K.o., personal archive of Vladimir Malyshchitskii.
51. Mikhail Bulgakov, "Kabala sviatosh (Mol'er)," in P'esy (Moscow, 1991), 211-60. Na Iugo-Zapade director Beliakovich indicated that the troupe relied on the published text. Beliakovich, interview, 19 October 1991.
52. K.o., Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
53. Other outcast heroes included Joan of Arc, Berenger in Ionesco's Rhinoceros, Pugachev, Hamlet Vladimir Maiakovskii, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and the ugly duckling.
54. Spencer Golub, The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (Iowa City, 1994), 1.
55. The term aesthetic satisfaction was used by V. A. Krupskii to describe a play at Na Iugo-Zapade. Letter, 21 February 1984, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
56. Letter, 24 February 1984, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
57. Vladimir Kruglov, "Prishel, uvidel, poliubil ..." in Natal'ia A. Kaidalova, comp., Stanovlenie: Teatr-studiia na Iugo-Zapade (Moscow, 1988), 74.
58. K.o., Malyshchitskii archive.
59. For an analysis of Vakhtangov's work, see Nick Worrall, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: Tairov - Vakhtangov - Okhlopkov (Cambridge, Eng., 1989).
60. On Liubimov and synthetic theater, see Alma Law, "The Trouble with Lyubimov," American Theatre 2 (April 1985): 4-11.
61. K.o., Malyshchitskii archive.
62. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
63. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive.
64. Letter, undated, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
65. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive. For Spesivtsev's discussion of the censor's disapproval, see his Moei pamiati poezd (Moscow, 1980), 28-32.
66. Letter, undated, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
67. Natal'ia Kaidalova, "Teatr nachinaetsia s repertuara," in Kaidalova, comp., Stanovlenie, 30.
68. Beliakovich, interview, 19 October 1991.
69. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
70. Letter, 21 February 1984, Na Iugo-Zapade archive. Iablochkin is referring to Georgii Tovstonogav's production A History of a Horse at Leningrad's Bolshoi dramaticheskii teatr. The play is based on Lev Tolstoi's story Kholstomer, which was initially conceived and adapted by Mark Rozovskii, who directed amateur theaters in the 1960s and 1980s.
71. Irina Guseva, in "Chto my zhdem ot teatra," Teatr, February 1981, 103.
72. M. Dmitrievskaia, "Prodolzhenie mechty," Smena, 28 December 1974.
73. In the post-Stalin era, the perceived relationship between integrity and sincerity was first raised in Vladimir Pomerantsev's provocative article "Ob iskrenosti v literature," in Novyi mir, December 1953, 218-45.
74. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
75. See Vadim Golikov, "Shkola universitetskoi 'dramy,'" in Istoriia Leningradskogo universiteta (Leningrad, 1990), 43; Tamara Basnina, interview, Moscow, 1 March 1991; Mikhail Shchepenko, interview, Moscow, 6 March 1991; Sergei Kachanov, interview by Larisa Solntseva, Moscow, 22 February 1991.
76. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
77. K.o., Malyshchitskii archive.
78. Letter, fall 1985, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
79. Kruglov, "Prishel, uvidel, poliubil," 76.
80. This stability also helps explain the richness of their archive.
81. K.o., Kamernaia stsena archive.
82. Iurii Smirnov-Nesvitskii, quoted in T. Otiugova, "Subbota protiv Riska," Smena, 26 May 1975. They chose the word guest because it implied both a welcome atmosphere and active participation in the performance.
83. K.o., Subbota archive.
84. Iu. Smirnov-Nesvitskii, "TEATR-klub eksperimentuet," Klub i khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel'nost', March 1975, 35;
85. T. Zabozlaeva, "Subbota," Teatr, November 1982, 78.
86. Kirill Dateshidze, interview, Leningrad, 19 July 1991.
87. Anketa, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
88. Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Boston, 1990);
89. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (New York, 1989);
90. John Bushnell, "Urban Leisure Culture in Post-Stalin Russia: Stability as a Social Problem?" in Terry Thompson and Richard Sheldon, eds., Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham (Boulder, Colo.: 1988), 58-86;
91. Fran Markowitz, "Russkaia Druzhba: Russian Friendship in American and Israeli Contexts," Slavic Review 50, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 637-45. Markowitz claims that "friendships, then, provided Soviet citizens with the only arenas where they can act out their individualism and express their own particular joys, needs, and grievances." Her conclusions are based on interviews with Jews who emigrated from 1972 to 1983. Although Markowitz's assessment may be accurate for this segment of Soviet society, the ostracism faced by refusniks suggests that their experiences cannot be considered typical.
92. "Dlia tekh, kto liubit teatr," Leningradskii rabochii, 20 November 1981. Other studios in the article, including Subbota, Perekrestok, and the Leningrad State University Student Theater, did not choose to call special attention to this aspect of their mission, although they also provided these opportunities.
93. F. Lur'e, "Teatral'nye studii - eto interesno," Zavodskaia pravda, 2 March 1982.
94. In the mid-1960s, the student theater Nash dom at Moscow State University incorporated audience discussions as an "Act II" of their performances of Tselyi vecher kak prokliatye (An entire evening as the damned). See Mark Rozovskii, Samootdacha (Moscow, 1976).
95. Tat'iana Zhakovskaia, interview, Leningrad, 2 July 1991.
96. K.o., Malyshchitskii archive.
97. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive. Emphasis in the original.
98. Lur'e, "Teatral'nye studii - eto interesno." The club's name is a play on the word liubitel', which refers to both "amateur" and "lover."
99. Beliakovich, interview, 19 October 1991; Veniamin Fil'shtinskii, interview, Leningrad, 3 October 1991.
100. Zhakovskaia, interview, 2 July 1991. Irina Iakovleva, an actress at Okoshka, confirmed Zhakovskaia's observation. Irina Iakovleva, interview, Leningrad, 2 July 1991.
101. Marina Litvinova, "Nichego dlia teatra ne zhalko," Iunost', March 1986, 97.
102. K.o., Na Krasnoi Presne archive.
103. Letter, 19 February 1984, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
104. Letter, undated, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
105. Letter, 24 December 1983, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
106. Irma Alekseeva, "Teatr kupit venskie stul'ia," in Kaidalova, comp., Stanovlenie, 57.
107. Shchepenko, interview, 6 March 1991.
108. This council should not be confused with the official artistic council that oversaw a studio's activities and approved annual repertory plans, although there may have been some overlap of members.
109. Litvinova, "Nichego dlia teatra ne zhalko," 96-97.
110. Otchet o rabote 1985-1986, Na Iugo-Zapade archive. The extent of actual activity is not clear. Other studios also involved volunteers in various support activities.
111. Litvinova, "Nichego dlia teatra ne zhalko," 96. OBKhSS is the Otdel po bor'be s khishcheniem sotsialisticheskoi sobstvennosti (Department for the campaign against the embezzlement of socialist property).
112. PRIKAZ po Domu kul'tury "Krasnaia zvezda," 19 May 1983, Chelovek archive. Roman Kozak, a performer in The Emigrants, denied that tickets were sold, but the practice was not unheard of. Roman Kozak, interview, Moscow, 18 March 1991. This alleged activity was one of the reasons given for closing the studio. In any case, the studio did not have official permission to perform the banned play.
113. Undated letter, Na Iugo-Zapade archive.
114. Beliakovich, interview, 19 October 1991.
115. By 1990 when I attended numerous performances at the studios discussed here, none of them offered comment books or postperformance discussions. Other, newer theaters did occasionally provide them.