What did modern theatre in Russia look like and how did it foreground tradition building and transmission processes? The book challenges conventional historiographical approaches by weaving contemporary theories on cultural transmission into its historical narrative. It argues that processes of transmission – training spaces, acting manuals, photographic evidence, newspaper reports, international networking, informal encounters, cultural memories – contribute to the formation and consolidation of theatre traditions. Through English translations of rare Russian sources, the book expounds on: *side-lined material on Stanislavsky, including his relationship with German actor Ludwig Barnay, use of improvisation at the First Studio, and rehearsal practices for Artists and Admirers (1933); *Valentin Smyshlaev's acting manual The Technique to Process Stage Performance and the creation of hybrid practices; *proletarian theatre as an amateur-professional combination and force in the transformation of everyday life, as seen in the Proletkult's volume Art at the Workers' Clubs; *Meyerhold's Borodin Studio as an early example of Practice as Research, his European tour of 1930, and international persona as depicted in newspapers published in the West; and *Asja Lacis's work with children, which contributes to current efforts to address the gender imbalance that is often characteristic of modernism. This historical-theoretical investigation is combined with practical exercises that provide a more experiential understanding of the modern performance realities involved. In this way, the book speaks not only to theatre scholars and historians, but also to students and practitioners engaged in practical work.

To call something modern is to assert something fundamental about the social, cultural, economic and technical sophistication of that thing, over and against what has come before. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age provides an interdisciplinary overview of theatre and performance in their social and material contexts from the late 19th century through the early 2000s, emphasizing key developments and trends that both exemplify and trouble the various meanings of the term 'modern', and the identity of modernist theatre and performance. Highly illustrated with 40 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

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.

In the Russian modernist era, literature threw itself open to influences from other art forms, most particularly the visual arts. Collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and theatre and cinema directors took place more intensively and productively than ever before or since. Equally striking was the incursion of spatial and visual motifs and structures into verbal texts. Verbal and visual principles of creation joined forces in an attempt to transform and surpass life through art. Yet willed transcendence of the boundaries between art forms gave rise to confrontation and creative tension as well as to harmonious co-operation. This collection of essays by leading British, American and Russian scholars, first published in 2000, draws on a rich variety of material - from Dostoevskii to Siniavskii, from writers' doodles to cabarets, from well-known modernists such as Akhmatova, Malevich, Platonov and Olesha to less well-known figures - to demonstrate the creative power and dynamism of Russian culture 'on the boundaries'.

Russia in Britain offers the first comprehensive account of the breadth and depth of the British fascination with Russian and Soviet culture, tracing its transformative effect on British intellectual life from the 1880s, the decade which saw the first sustained interest in Russian literature, to 1940, the eve of the Soviet Union's entry into the Second World War. By focusing on the role played by institutions, disciplines and groups, libraries, periodicals, government agencies, concert halls, publishing houses, theatres, and film societies, this collection marks an important departure from standard literary critical narratives, which have tended to highlight the role of a small number of individuals, notably Sergei Diaghilev, Constance Garnett, Theodore Komisarjevsky, Katherine Mansfield, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. Drawing on recent research and newly available archives, Russia in Britain shifts attention from individual figures to the networks within which they operated, and uncovers the variety of forces that enabled and structured the British engagement with Russian culture. The resulting narrative maps an intricate pattern of interdisciplinary relations and provides the foundational research for a new understanding of Anglo-Russian/Soviet interaction. In this, it makes a major contribution to the current debates about transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and 'global modernisms' that are reshaping our knowledge of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British culture.

A comprehensive study of the OBERIU group of avant-garde Soviet writers.

An essential volume for theater artists and students alike, this anthology includes the full texts of sixteen important examples of avant-garde drama from the most daring and influential artistic movements of the first half of the twentieth century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism. Each play is accompanied by a bio-critical introduction by the editor, and a critical essay, frequently written by the playwright, which elaborates on the play’s dramatic and aesthetic concerns. A new introduction by Robert Knopf and Julia Listengarten contextualizes the plays in light of recent critical developments in avant-garde studies. By examining the groundbreaking theatrical experiments of Jarry, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Artaud, and others, the book foregrounds the avant-garde’s enduring influence on the development of modern theater.

A fully updated new edition of this overview of contemporary Russia and the influence of its Soviet past.