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[NEW TYPE OF THEATRE FOR A NEW SOVIET MAN] Moskovsky dramatichesky teatr imeni MGSPS: Gastrol’naia poezdka 1926 [i.e. Theatre of Moscow Provincial Council of Trade Unions: Tour of 1926]

Item #296

Moscow: MGSPS, [1926]. [32] pp.: ill., port. 17x12,5 cm. In original illustrated constructivist wrappers. Tear of the spine, wrappers are slightly detached from the text block, loss of the small fragment of the front wrapper (restored with paper) and of the back wrapper, Soviet bookshop’s stamp and price written in pen on the back wrapper.

First and only edition. One of 10000 copies.
This publication was made during the most experimental, bold and innovative period of the Theatre of Moscow Provincial Council of Trade Unions.

With 16 portraits of the theatre company (Liubimov-Lanskoi, Doroshevich, Vanin, Rozen-Sanin and others) and 6 scenes from productions. This edition covers the tour of the theater that took place in 1926 in Leningrad, Gomel, Kiev, Kharkov, Zaporozhye and Odessa. The edition includes lists of the company, staff, route, repertoire (‘Storm’, ‘Georgy Gapon’, ‘Locust’, ‘The Year of 1881’), short biography and programs for an each production.

The Theatre was born in 1922 on the initiative of trade unionists for working audience. The first performance, composed of fragments of Leonid Andreev’s play «Savva», was shown in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. It aroused great interest among spectators and the press. In connection with the fact that the young collective enjoyed the support of the cultural department of the Moscow trade unions, on March 3, 1923, it was given an official status. In 1924, the theater acquired the theater building in the Hermitage Garden at its complete disposal.

In 1925 the theater was headed by an energetic, experienced theatrical figure, actor and director Evsei Osipovich Lyubimov-Lanskoy. Liubimov-Lanskoi was one of the most active theatre activists of 1920s, creator of the first realistic productions about the Revolution. The distinguishing features of the Lyubimov-Lansky productions are strict, precise fixation of life and documentary, and at the same time revolutionary pathos, agitation. He called his theater «theatre of social truth», and his realism - «realism biased, sarcastic, sharp, class-sober”.

With him, the glory of the experimental stage of modern Soviet drama became established behind the theater. The theater enters into creative cooperation with V. Bill-Belotserkovsky, F. Gladkov, V. Kirshon, A. Afinogenov, N. Pogodin and other young playwrights, trying to find contact and mutual understanding with the young audience of the new spectator.

The main artist of the theater at that time was B. Volkov, who worked in the style of constructivism. In the 1920s the theater was in the forefront of the Soviet drama, but in the 1930s this type of theater and actor was already unclaimed.

Worldcat locates a copy at Amherst College Library.

Status: On Hold