ABSTRACT
In her memoirs, Sofiya Giatsintova, a young actress in the First Studio, remembers that she and her colleagues were so caught up in rehearsals for Twelfth Night that they paid little attention to the February Revolution. They did attend speeches by Kerensky the leader of the Provisional Government and saw KS in the audience. This artistic insouciance could not long withstand the pressure of events. The Bolshevik take-over in October, with its contingent bloodshed and civil conflict, turned a confused situation into a rout. Theatres dependent on government subsidy had no sense of how they were to exist; those dependent on the box-office saw empty houses due to unsafe streets and the devaluation of currency.
