Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia"Swift captures the habits, inclinations, tastes, and uses of leisure time among Tsarist Russia's urban lower classes—in all their colorful complexity. He vividly presents the kaleidoscopic world of popular theater, where culture meets entertainment, where Shakespeare and Ostrovsky meet racy vaudeville, farce, and melodrama, and where social and cultural identities blur. His study is a carefully analyzed, superbly documented, and immensely readable exposition of how "popular culture" really worked in prerevolutionary Russia, and how the tastes of its consumers constantly stymied and conflicted with the visions of state, educated society, and radicals alike."—Richard Stites, Georgetown University "The fullest and most interesting account of how the Russian public seized upon the theater as an art form, as entertainment, and as an instrument of popular education. Swift makes Ostrovsky, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy come alive, bringing great clarity to the larger context in which Russia's great dramatists thought about theater, its audience, and its functions."—Jeffrey Brooks, author of When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 "In this stimulating book, Anthony Swift shows how popular theater became a forum where all the weighty questions of Russia's future were discussed: Who were the Russian people, how should they be governed, and what should they believe?"—Lynn Mally, author of Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State |
Contents
The Urban Theatrical Landscape | 12 |
Peoples Theater and Cultural Politics | 39 |
Censorship and Repertoire | 88 |
Theater Temperance and Popular Culture | 131 |
Workers Theater Proletarian Culture | 181 |
Audience Reception | 205 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
1905 Revolution actors Aleksandr Alexander Ostrovsky amateur approved artistic aters balagan carnivals censors censorship century cinema classes classics comedies commercial common contemporary critics depiction dlia drama circles educated elite enlightenment entertainments factory theaters factory workers fairground theaters Guardianship of Popular holiday Ibid Imperial Russia imperial theaters industrialists intelligentsia Istoriia Ivan Shcheglov Kanatchikov Karpov kopeks labor Leningrad literary masses melodrama moral Moscow Art Theater Moskovskie vedomosti narod narodnogo teatra narodnoi trezvosti Narodnyi teatr narodnykh Nevskii Society Nicholas II Nikolai opera organized Ostrovsky Ostrovsky's patriotic peasants people’s People's House people's theater Petersburg Petrushka plays pleasure gardens political Popov popular audiences popular culture popular stage popular theaters proletarian culture Proletkult Rabochii rabochikh rational recreations razvlechenii repertoire RGIA Rossii Russian russkogo scenes Shlisselburg Skomorokh Skorobogatov social tastes Teatr i iskusstvo temperance guardianships temperance theaters theater performances theatrical tion troupe tsar urban Vasilevskii Island Theater vaudevilles vedomosti Vestnik working-class zhizn