The Modern Russian Theater: A Literary and Cultural History: A Literary and Cultural History

by Rzhevsky,Nicholas

• ISBN13: 9780765620613
• ISBN10: 0765620618
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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, Tovstonogov, 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 Theater 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-modernism, and the creative renaissance of the first decades since the Soviet regime's collapse.

Table of Contents

Preface

Predisposition: The Theater of Literature

Beginnings and Ends: 1900-1917

History

Literature, Philosophy, and Literary Criticism

Religion

Theater Criticism and the Conditions of Theater

A Little Tomfoolery

The Self, the Saint, and the Moral Charm of Crickets: The Petty Demon; Alexis, Man of God; Cricket on the Hearth

The Moscow Art Theater

Postscripts of the Self

Revolution and the Twenties

Political Bouffe

Commedia della Death

Adapting to Socialist Realism

The Peasant Hypocrite: Okhlopkov

MAT, Bulgakov, and the Art of Compromise

Bulgakov's Love Affairs

The Lessons of Socialist Realism

The Age of Red Aquarius

The Cold Thaw

The Saving Idiot

At Full Voice

The Past Regained

Village Theater

City Theater

The Strange Horse

Intrusions on Political Orthodoxies

The BDT and Tolstoy's Yardstick

In Dostoevsky's Corner: Brother Alesha

Lady Macbeth and Junona and Avos

A Tale of Inspection

The End of Communism and the Survival of Theater

Debating Adaptations

Kharms's Absurdities

Sentimentalism, Musicals, and Bulgakov Return

Dostoevsky's Subversions of Sentiment

The Master on Stage Again: The Master and Margarita

The Performance of Absence: Vladimir Vysotsky

Adapting Tragedy

The Nineties and Beyond: Ends and Beginnings

Beyond Politics

Quoting Dostoevsky

Quoting Pushkin

Quoting Gogol

Quoting Chekhov

Beyond History

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.