A01=Boris Wolfson
acting
actors
Aleksandr Afinogenov
Author_Boris Wolfson
Bolshoi Theater
Boris Pasternak
Category=ATD
Category=ATY
Category=DSG
Central Children's Theater
children's theater
Committee on Arts Affairs
Congress of Soviet Writers
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eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
experimental theater
Kerzhentsev
Konstantin Stanislavskii
Lunacharskii
Maksim Gorky
Meyerhold
Mikhail Bulgakov
Moscow Art Theater
Natalia Sats
Olga Knipper-Chekhova
playwrighting
poetic realism
Pogodin
political repression
Rozanov
show trials
Soviet
Soviet culture
Soviet playwrights
Soviet Union
Stalin
Stalinism
Stalinist culture
theatrical realism
theories of acting
USSR
Vishnevskii
Yuri Olesha
Zinaida Raikh
Product details
- ISBN 9780810149243
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Northwestern University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Examining theatrical performance under Stalinist cultural mandates
Talk of Joseph Stalin's 'show trials,' the public prosecutions in Moscow's Hall of Columns in the late 1930s, is so familiar as to obscure the relationship between actual shows - in the Soviet Union's major theaters - and politics. Travesty Actors: Self and Theater in Stalinist Culture examines theatrical performance within the context of the Soviet cultural establishment's fashioning of a 'genuine Soviet person.' Boris Wolfson focuses on prominent and controversial plays by artists including Aleksandr Afinogenov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Yuri Olesha, and Natalia Sats and the efforts of theater companies, like the Moscow Arts Theater, the Meyerhold Theater, and the Central Children's Theater, to adhere to this cultural mandate while grappling with repression, censorship, and conflicting interpretations of its aims. Drawing on archival materials, diaries and memoirs and eyewitness accounts, Wolfson greatly illuminates the achievements of Soviet theater during this harsh period and the cultural significance of artistic theories and practices for articulating and enacting ideological programs.
Talk of Joseph Stalin's 'show trials,' the public prosecutions in Moscow's Hall of Columns in the late 1930s, is so familiar as to obscure the relationship between actual shows - in the Soviet Union's major theaters - and politics. Travesty Actors: Self and Theater in Stalinist Culture examines theatrical performance within the context of the Soviet cultural establishment's fashioning of a 'genuine Soviet person.' Boris Wolfson focuses on prominent and controversial plays by artists including Aleksandr Afinogenov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Yuri Olesha, and Natalia Sats and the efforts of theater companies, like the Moscow Arts Theater, the Meyerhold Theater, and the Central Children's Theater, to adhere to this cultural mandate while grappling with repression, censorship, and conflicting interpretations of its aims. Drawing on archival materials, diaries and memoirs and eyewitness accounts, Wolfson greatly illuminates the achievements of Soviet theater during this harsh period and the cultural significance of artistic theories and practices for articulating and enacting ideological programs.
Boris Wolfson (1975-2024) was an associate professor of Russian at Amherst College. He coedited the volume Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action.
Simon Morrison is a professor in the Departments of Music and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
Simon Morrison is a professor in the Departments of Music and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
