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[ACTORS AS RECITERS] Rabota chtetsa-aktiora [i.e. The Work of an Actor-Reciter]

Verkhovtseva, F.

Moscow: Teakinopechat’, 1930. Item #419

63 pp., 1 ad.: ill. 17,5x13 cm. In original photomontage constructivist styled wrappers. Very good. Rubbed, tears of the spine, Soviet bookshop’s stamps (one is erased).

First edition. One of 5000 copies. Rare.

This is a remarkable evidence of the time when actors were in high demand across the Union for their reciting abilities. The rise of educational needs, emergence of thousands of workers’ clubs, etc. led to actors traveling around and reciting fiction. The book itself is very interesting: it includes a few rare photographs of such recitals and even a photograph of worker’s cafeteria where sometimes such recitals were held. It also includes excerpts from the author’s diary (actor F. Verkhovtseva) from which one can learn that such practices were coming to stay with difficulties, workers preferred music and sung couplets and often during lunch breaks. The author also offers her thoughts on how to improve this practice, like moving concerts from lunch breaks to evenings, attract directors and set designers, improve decoration of the clubs, etc., so the concert would eventually become a play.

Worldcat locates an only copy in Harvard College Library.

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