1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780375003321

Autore

Swift Eugene Anthony

Titolo

Popular theater and society in Tsarist Russia [[electronic resource] /] / E. Anthony Swift

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, Calif., : University of California Press, c2002

ISBN

1-282-35646-1

9786612356469

0-520-92587-4

1-59734-823-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (367 p.)

Collana

Studies on the history of society and culture ; ; 44

Disciplina

792/.0947

Soggetti

Theater - Russia - History

Popular culture - Russia

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-326) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration and Dates -- Introduction -- 1. The Urban Theatrical Landscape -- 2. People's Theater and Cultural Politics -- 3. Censorship and Repertoire -- 4. Theater, Temperance, and Popular Culture -- 5. Workers' Theater, Proletarian Culture, and Respectability -- 6. The People at the Theater: Audience Reception -- Conclusion -- Epilogue -- Appendix of Titles -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This is the most comprehensive study available of the popular theater 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. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change. Swift illuminates many aspects of the story of these popular theaters-the cultural politics and aesthetic ambitions of theater directors and actors, state censorship politics and their role in shaping



the theatrical repertoire, and the theater as a vehicle for social and political reform. He looks at roots of the theaters, discusses specific theaters and performances, and explores in particular how popular audiences responded to the plays.