Mally, Lynn. Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938

Mally, Lynn. Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938. Cornell University Press, 2000.

The purpose of the book is to study what functions amateur theater played in the establishment and legitimation of the new political, social, cultural and symbolic order that came to being after the Bolshevik Revolution. Aesthetic and political self-expression, entertainment, dissemination of political information by authorities, testing ground for professional scene. Eventually, evolution of Soviet amateur theater contributed to the emergence of the genre of socialist realism. Extremely popular in post-revolutionary time, “amateur theaters provided a venue where performers, the audience, and political overseers intersected” (3).

One aspect: legitimation of the Soviet power. “encourages army enlistment, mobilized participants for Soviet celebrations, and informed audiences about international events… spread the political message of the revolution” (4). Bolshevik government did its best to control both professional and amateur theater, since “by integrating the intellect and the emotions, theater had the power to create new patterns of behavior” (9). Amateur theaters played on the side of Soviet ideology in its cultural struggle with “low-level” entertainment during the NEP. Evolution of different genres: Mally emphasizes a difference between aesthetic drama and social drama (the latter aimed at immediate and concrete transformation of the real world) and problematizes evolution of Soviet amateur theater as searches for new forms of social drama, where there would be no principle difference between audience and actors. Hence Soviet amateur theater was an important venue of collective space (never of the private one!). Education and mobilization of audience, the enlightening function.

Soviet clubs (of which amateur theater was, perhaps, the most important part) served to create new revolutionary public space. Hence interest to them from revolutionary architects and power bodies, including Red Army, trade unions, and ministerial bodies. Struggle in repertoire between pre-1917 plays and new theatrical forms. Use of old cultural forms (folklore heroes and motives) in new theater. Different forms of improvisation and “living newspapers” as reaction to contemporaneous events and urge for revolutionary activism—social drama. Mass events involving large groups of people.

Spread of agitational theater of small forms during the NEP as a reaction to the return of a competing petty bourgeois culture. Part of state efforts to “enlighten” the audience by means of cultural production. Use of amateur performance for creating new Soviet traditions: in particular, Soviet celebrations: theaters as a means to construct atmosphere and emotions of festivity. Propaganda of a new way of life (novyi byt) through theatrical performances – performance as a didactic text (hence the metaphor “living newspaper”). Criticism of small forms: trying to conform to their audiences’ tastes, they started to resemble bourgeois theatrical forms (cabaret). Avant-Garde (Meyerhold) trying small forms, too: the moment when amateur and professional theater meet. Debates of whether amateur theater as a place which draws on immediate professional experience of actors as workers should become the starting point of new socialist culture.

Second half of the 1920s: “professionalization” of amateur theaters. They are no longer regarded as a heuristic venue where new forms are searched for: now the state makes a stronger effort to control them. Amateur theaters as potentially political unreliable (a high level of support of Trotsky and other opponents of Stalin). Criticism of small forms as no longer capable of attracting audiences. Club plays as a solution. Initially writing by actors themselves, but criticism for “poor taste,” and controlling organs publish “repertoire guides” to show what is acceptable (and “good”) on the scene. At this point, a problem with evidence springs up: Mally makes claims about audiences’ positive or negative reaction on the basis of official press and documents, which is problematic (p. 100). Growing demands to introduce “professional” plays in repertoire of amateur theaters. Collaboration between amateurs and professionals.

Mally then focuses on the best-known amateur theater TRAM in Leningrad as a case of her studies into Soviet amateur theater of the NEP era, a kind of encapsulation of tendencies characteristic for this cultural phenomenon. “Staging Soviet youth culture.” Depiction of social characters and tensions as a way to criticize and eliminate them. She doesn’t really analyze the material of plays stages there, actually—e.g., Sashka Chumovoi offers an excellent example to look at new cultural norms and values (and reiteration of certain old ones), but Mally offers instead a Soviet-type literary analysis of the plot and uses categories borrowed from contemporary scholarly criticism – no critical theory of her own working here. She analyzes plays as didactic text, but only to the respect that was intentionally didactic there. Silences are omitted, too. Analyzes how discussion of sexuality on stage was mixed with politicization to exercise a better political control over the Komsomol youth. Debates over the status of TRAM as somewhere between amateur and professional. Its professionalization, search for identity (with whom are you, TRAM?) and expansion during the Great Break. Emergence of new amateur theatrical forms directly at factories and other sites of production which challenge the status of TRAM as a vanguard theater. Criticism from nascent apologists of ‘social realism’ for non-realist methods of cultural presentation; political claims related to visions of what proper Soviet culture should look like.

New wave of amateur theater in the Five-Year Plan: agitprop brigades. Rejection of professional stage for its distance from “real life,” aggressive search for and the making of audiences. Rejecting of principles of aesthetic drama, agitprop brigades urged to change their spectators immediately. Cultural production as “weapon.” Unlike club theaters of the early NEP, agitprop brigades were highly mobile and stressed that they don’t take interests of their audiences into account, but rather only interests of the socialist building. They even were supposed to engaged into “extra-stage” activities, performing functions of education and disciplining outside the stage. Inclusion of rituals of public shaming of “bad” workers and praise of “good” ones. “The main goals of agitprop brigades were to inspire action, not to produce works of lasting artistic value” (161) – which gave birth to a specific aesthetics. Criticism, breaking the borders of public life, acute attention to current events, interaction with audience. Challenge of conventional understandings of performance space. Aggressive egalitarianism, for which agitprop brigades were attacked from other cultural groups. However, with the decrease of the militant rhetoric in Soviet culture and media, their role also started to decrease. Call for synthesis and cooperation with professional theater (professionalism + attentiveness to social problems) as one of bases for social realism.

End of the First Five-Year Plan meant end of militant youth revolution and culture. Creation of a “spectacle state” which attempted to fix the spectators’ point of view (kultura dva). Show trials, parades, conventions, public parks, massive sport stadiums, workers’ palaces, etc. – Von Geldern, Cultural and Social Geography. “The spectator became the model for the ideal Soviet citizen.” (182) Mally then examines how this change in Soviet cultural policy sterilized amateur theater from all possibly unexpected meanings it could create. More focus than ever was placed on “professionalization” of amateur troupes, allegedly in the name of better quality, but actually for the sake of better control of their production and of their audiences. Social drama disappeared from the agenda, amateur performances were re-aestheticized and the distance between audience (which was no more on show) and actors (who were now the spectacle) was restored.

In sum, the trajectory of Soviet amateur history from 1917 to late 1930s was an itinerary from an original cultural phenomenon to “proto-professional” theater, its repertoire was narrowed (anti-formalist campaign, removal of most Western plays) to a small set of approved plays.