Description
Book SynopsisThis study looks at the popular theatre that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift examines the origins and significance of the new "people's theaters" that were created for the lower classes in St Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917.
Trade Review"The fullest and most interesting account of how the Russian public seized upon the theater as an art form, as entertainment, and as an instrument of popular education. Swift makes Ostrovsky, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy come alive, bringing great clarity to the larger context in which Russia's great dramatists thought about theater, its audience, and its functions."-Jeffrey Brooks, author of When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Dates Introduction Chapter One: The Urban Theatrical Landscape Chapter Two: People's Theater and Cultural Politics Chapter Three: Censorship and Repertoire Chapter Four: Theater, Temperance, and Popular Culture Chapter Five: Workers' Theater, Proletarian Culture, and Respectability Chapter Six: The People at the Theater: Audience Reception Conclusion Epilogue Appendix of Titles Notes Bibliography Index
