The Russian Theatre After Stalin

By Anatoly Smeliansky

Book Overview

This is the first book to explore theater in Russia after Stalin. Through his work at the Moscow Art Theatre, Anatoly Smeliansky is in a key position to analyze contemporary events on the Russian stage and he combines this first-hand knowledge with valuable archival material. Smeliansky chronicles developments from 1953 and the rise of a new Soviet theater, highlighting the social and political events that shaped Russian drama and performance. The book also focuses on major directors and practitioners and contains a chronology, glossary of names, and informative illustrations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521582350
• ISBN13: 9780521582353
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Courage and Subtlety in Soviet Russia

Anatoly Smeliansky has told a tale of creative spirit surviving in an intellectual Gulag. The struggle of art, theater, and creativity to have life rivals the other world tenacity of tube worms living at volcanic ports on the ocean floor. The remarkable achievement of Russian theatre to provide intellectual nourishment to a nation, and its course of evolution during the decline and fall of Soviet Communism shines a light upon the individual's drive to be unique in an environment too often demonized in American portrayals. The theatrical stories involve names of actors, directors, and writers, mostly unknown to me, but as the story played on, in three acts, Dr. Smeliansky made them come alive. Their triumphs, failures and leaps are given a marquee exhibition in a history unvarnished . Wrapped in drama , this insider's slalom and struggle through politicians, censors, bureaucrats, and quislings plays out in as Russian a presentation as could be imagined, with hundreds of characters, a palate of hues and a landscape as small as a theater and vast as Russia herself.