ABSTRACT
The Bolshevik Revolution had an enormous impact on cultural life in general, but particularly on the theatre, which was quickly perceived as a possible tool for ‘agitation’ among the masses and the propagation of socialist ideas. Many theatre directors supported the Revolution, and were themselves supported in turn by the People’s Commissar for Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharsky. Vsevolod Meierkhol’d (1874-1940), who had staged rather grandiose pre-revolutionary productions at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, immediately dedicated his art to the Revolution, and from 1918-21 he was in charge of the Moscow Theatre Section of the Commissariat. During this time, commonly known as the ‘Theatrical October’, he demanded a complete break with theatrical traditions: the theatre should become exclusively a tool for state and Party propaganda. Along with the young directors Sergei Eisenstein, Nikolai Evreinov and Nikolai Okhlopkov, Meierkhol’d favoured mass spectacles, such as Evreinov’s Storming of the Winter Palace (Vziatie zimnego dvortsa), performed on 7 November 1920 for 100,000 spectators with 8,000 participants commanded by the director with the help of a field phone. A celebration of the Revolution, the spectacle underlined at the same time a theatricalization of life (based on real events), and a politicization of art. Both directors and playwrights sought to politicize themes and theatricalize form in the years immediately after the Revolution. Vladimir Maiakovsky’s Mystery Bouffe (Misteriia-Buff , 1918 and 1921), was the first ‘Soviet’ play, specifically written in compliance with these demands. While thematically showing the triumph of the proletariat, Maiakovsky commented in the prologue of the play on the need to break down the fourth wall and openly attacked the verisimilitude of Stanislavsky’s realism.
