ABSTRACT
WE FUTURISTS ARE PROFOUNDLY disgusted with the contemporary stage because it stupidly fluctuates between historic reconstruction (pastiche or plagiarism) and a minute, wearying, photographic reproduction of actuality. We delight in frequenting the musichall or variety theatre, smoking concert, circus, cabaret and night club, which o»er today the only theatrical entertainment worthy of the true Futurist spirit. Futurism exalts the variety theatre because, born as it were with us, it fortunately has no tradition, no masters, no dogmas, and subsists on the moment. The variety theatre is absolutely practical because it aims at entertaining and amusing the public by performances either comic or startling to the imagination. The authors, actors, and mechanics of the variety theatre exist and conquer their di¹culties only for one purpose, that of everlastingly startling by new inventions. Hence the absolute impossibility of stagnation or repetition, the desperate emulation of brain and muscle to beat all previous records in agility, speed, strength, complexity and grace.
