Communal solidarity and amateur theatre in post-revolutionary Russia : theoretical approaches

Abstract

Modern theatre and performance in Russia was not only marked by the groundbreaking practices developed by professional practitioners like Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. A parallel movement developed within amateur theatre circles that, though at the margins of the scene in turn-of-thetwentieth-century Russia, evidenced a marked increase in numbers and activity after the October Revolution of 1917. Workers, not only in the main cities like Moscow and Petrograd/Leningrad but also across the country, relished the public voice that theatre offered. The inroads that the workers had made by 1922 were proudly and positively trumpeted by Platon Kerzhentsev, a leading figure in early post-revolutionary debates on the nature of proletarian art and community theatre, to which he contributed through several theoretical writings that culminated in the publication and extensive revision of his book Tvorchesky Teatr (The Creative Theatre) (Keržencev [1922] 1979). A central chapter in this book is ‘The results of the new theatre’, where Kerzhentsev gives a broad review of the scene while showing a clear and biased identification towards amateur theatre. For example, at one point Kerzhentsev says: ‘The experience derived from the past two years [1918– 20] has taught us that the revolutionary creativity of the popular masses in the fields of the arts is capable of achieving major victories’ (Keržencev [1922] 1979: 97). However, underneath this romantic championing, one can find a number of examples that shed light on the practices adopted by the workers in creating their theatre pieces.