#soviet theatre

[on-holidays-by-mistake]

Bruno Freindlich (1909-2002) as Hamlet (1954, a stage production by Grigori Kozintsev)

[historybizarre]

In the 1920s, the Berezil was the largest state-funded theater in Soviet Ukraine. Based in Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, it produced extraordinary work. Yet it remains largely unknown today because most books on Soviet culture focus only on Moscow (or Leningrad), assuming that everything else is secondary. It is not. ....

But my favorite Berezil show is, in fact, not these more famous and serious plays, but rather the first Ukrainian musical revue, 1929’s Hello from Radio 477!.

Hello from Radio 477! shows the way Europe shaped Soviet Ukraine. The production was inspired by theater in Weimar Berlin, where Berezil artists traveled in 1927 and 1928. They enjoyed shows at theaters large and small, and at famous cabarets like the Scala, known for its line of dancing girls similar to New York’s Ziegfeld Follies.

[jaggedjot]

Armand the director, who recalls his time in the theatre with such fondness, continuing to feed his actors lines

[shosty-we-understand]

Fun fact (which I unfortunately can’t back up because I heard it from a friend but it doesn’t make anyone look bad so I’ll share it anyways): Dmitri Shostakovich was quite the fan of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar! He saw a performance of it in on a trip to London sometime between 1972, its West End premiere, and 1975, the year he died, and was apparently quite impressed.

Pictured below is a photo of Shostakovich and British composer Benjamin Britten. The two of them were reportedly quite good friends.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

1954 Soviet stamp of the Opera House in Kyiv, Ukraine.

[purplecyborgnewt]

Vija Artmane as Julia Lambert in Theatre (1978)

[angel11moon]

Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre

[fuzzysparrow]

In the Eye of the Storm

The exhibition In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s, at the Royal Academy of Arts showcases various artistic styles and cultural influences in Ukraine during the early 20th century. It tells the stories of modernist artists revitalising Ukraine’s culture and asserting its autonomy. The historical backdrop of Ukraine, which had been subject to the rule of various empires, led…

[thekittyfox2999]

Hey, sherlock tumblr

do you have anymore information on this?

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

On Dec. 30, Moscow communists and Komsomol members celebrated the 100th anniversary of the USSR by holding an impromptu event with the laying of flowers at the memorial plaque, "In memory of the creation of the USSR," installed on the facade of the Bolshoi Theater. It was in its halls that the First All-Union Congress of Soviets took place. Via Union of Communist Youth

[kikizoshi]

Feeling discouraged, so here's a short, unfinished Godos piece that will never be realised. Nikolai's attempting (read: failing) to write his first draft of a play (an adaptation of Dead Souls, Part 2). Fyodor was going to cheer him up and inspire him, somehow, but I don't have any clue how, so this is all I could get out of that idea. (I do at least like how it turned out, though, unfinished as it is.)

---

The words on the page taunted Nikolai like so many Sufi dervishes. They blurred, swirled into characters half-formed, who jumped and jeered just out of Nikolai’s sight. ‘Find us,’ they seemed to say. ‘Come and see our beautiful lives! And then depict us, reveal us to everyone, that we may truly exist.’ They beckoned him to find them, invited him to view their marvelous exploits, to laugh along with their absurd adventures—and then just as he reached to meet them, they slipped away, laughing. Unendingly they tortured him with scenes just beyond grasp, a perfect story hidden in the periphery of a dense fog.

Nikolai groaned, leaned back, and pressed his palms against his eyes. It was a perfect picture of agony, well-practiced and endlessly rehearsed. ‘Yet all the acting in the world won’t save a lacking script,’ he thought. ‘Ah, why can’t you just write yourselves? Hop along, I’ll even guide the quill, so long as you do something, anything, oh please…’ His entreaties, of course, prompted naught but more formless tittering. Nikolai sighed, and contemplated how effective bashing his scull against the door-jam would be at shaking something loose.

“Is something the matter?” an irritatingly calm Fyodor asked from behind him. Nikolai swung around in his chair, resting his arms on the back, and stared pointedly at his relaxed friend who lounged so serenely on the green recliner, a book nestled under his folded palms. The question itself was preemptive, a set-up, a frivolous first line of a three-line script which always arrived at the same conclusion. Nikolai recognised the offer for friendly—and perhaps even needed—advice, but took it no less bitterly. He smiled mirthlessly. Nevertheless, he played his part.

“Whatever gave you that impression? Was it the willful suicide of the last of my creative expression? Or perhaps you hear them laughing too?”

“Your characters won’t work with you?” (Here, the second phrase, to be replied with…)

“Oh, far beyond that. They won’t speak to me at all! I’m being shunned.”

“I see.” Fyodor concluded and stood, pulling the curtain on their impromptu play. Nikolai watched him go, mildly curious which remedy Fyodor would prescribe this time. “I need to visit the theatre,” he said finally. “Would you like to join me?”

Nikolai laughed flatly. “For what? The stage doesn’t—and I say this from great experience—do anything for one’s imagination. If anything, it’s worse, because you see everything that has been and none of what could be! Can you imagine that? I know, I know, you’re ‘not that way artistically inclined,’ but imagine for a moment that the sentences of your computer codes were jumping and jaunting about in front of your very eyes, and so to fix it, you decided to stare at someone else's pages. Well? Would that help you very much?”

“Most likely it wouldn’t.” Fyodor smiled. “But we won’t be going to the stage. I need to stop by the costuming department. Misha talked one of the women there into parting with an unused costume design for Verenka, but couldn’t pick it up himself.”

“And you just so happen to be free?”

“No,” Fyodor said, a bit dejected. “But I couldn’t stand to stare at my colleagues’ ‘pages’. As you say, it won’t do any good.” He sighed wearily. “Some fresh air and new scenery, tea, something else to think about… I need them greatly. And some company would be nice, too.”

Nikolai stood without ceremony (a shame, yes, but recall his lack of inspiration and forgive him), stretched, and said flatly, “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

---

As it turned out, Nikolai was quite quick to regret those words. A lovely stroll down the uncharacteristically sun-touched streets of St. Petersburg wound down into a bustling cafe.

---

Surprisingly, all went well at the theatre. The lady was quite nice, expressing her condolences and well-wishes for the ‘poor young woman’, and waved them on their way. Pattern safely secured, the two stopped by the next-door cafe, ‘The Stray Dog’, (home to aspiring and established artists alike), for a spot of tea. And thence all collapsed.

[cagdasyatirim]

[oldtimesnew]

Elena Simonova, Vasily Shukshin. Far Away… VTO Literary-Dramatic Theatre, Moscow, 1977

Scanned from the book "The Soviet Art Poster", Penguin Books.

[mykristeva]

Alla Tarasova, Гроза (Thunderstorm), dir. by Vladimir Petrov, 1934, based on a play by Aleksandr Ostrovsky, 1859. Work of social criticism, directed towards the Russian merchant class and women's oppression. Tasarova (1898-1973) was a famous stage and film actress. Also a pedagogue, she was a leading actress of Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre from the late 1920s onward. Later as director of the Moscow Art Theatre. Her repertoire included the works of Alexander Ostrovsky, Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Dostoevsky.

[tintinology]

So I was compiling a list of all the Tintin adaptations that have been done so far, and I'm surprised to see that The Crab with the golden claws isn't the most popular book to adapt??

It's actually a three-way tie between Red Rackhams Treasure, The seven crystal balls and Prisoners of the Sun

Who knew 🤔

[comradeowl]

"People's Theatre From the Box Office to the Stage," written by Mike Davidow, a Marxist theatrical critic, worked for the Daily World Marxist Newspaper. His work paints a vivid picture of the cultural and artistic life of the Soviet Union in the mid seventies. I hope everyone enjoys this recent upload!