Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist RussiaThis is the most comprehensive study available of the popular theater that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift examines the origins and significance of the new "people's theaters" that were created for the lower classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change. Swift illuminates many aspects of the story of these popular theaters—the cultural politics and aesthetic ambitions of theater directors and actors, state censorship politics and their role in shaping the theatrical repertoire, and the theater as a vehicle for social and political reform. He looks at roots of the theaters, discusses specific theaters and performances, and explores in particular how popular audiences responded to the plays. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 THE URBAN THEATRICAL LANDSCAPE | 12 |
2 PEOPLES THEATER AND CULTURAL POLITICS | 39 |
3 CENSORSHIP AND REPERTOIRE | 88 |
4 THEATER TEMPERANCE AND POPULAR CULTURE | 131 |
5 WORKERS THEATER PROLETARIAN CULTURE AND RESPECTABILITY | 181 |
AUDIENCE RECEPTION | 205 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
1905 Revolution actors Aleksandr Alexander Ostrovsky amateur approved artistic aters balagany 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 Ivan Shcheglov Kanatchikov Karpov kopeks literary melodrama Mikhailovskii moral Moscow Art Theater Moskovskie vedomosti Moskve narod narodnogo teatra narodnoi trezvosti Narodnyi teatr narodnykh Nevskii Society Nicholas II Nicholas II People's Nikolai Nikolai Popov opera organized Ostrovsky Ostrovsky's patriotic peasants people’s People's House people's theater Petersburg plays pleasure gardens political popechitel'stva Popov popular audiences popular culture popular stage popular theaters proletarian culture Proletkult Rabochii rabochikh rational recreations razvlechenii repertoire RGIA Rossii Russian Shlisselburg Skomorokh Skorobogatov social tastes Teatr i iskusstvo teatrov temperance guardianships temperance theaters theater performances theatrical tion troupe tsar urban Vasilevskii Island Theater vaudevilles vedomosti Vestnik Vospominaniia working-class zhizn