ARTIFICIAL HELLS

artificial hells
Kerzhentsev advocated the end of bourgeois repertoires and even bourgeois
actors, and instead promoted drama that took as its subject matter the crises
of class struggle (strikes, upheavals, insurrections, revolts) and which was
performed by the proletariat as part of ‘a permanent workshop . . . where
stars and extras are unknown’. 44 Some Proletkult theatre groups therefore
took the form of a collective institution in which every member of the theatre,
from the stage- hand to the actor, participated in all aspects of the
production – from the sewing of costumes, to the making of props, to the
directing of scenes, to the choice of plays. This was perceived as a way to
express collective consciousness; as such, the Proletkult’s aims were both
social and technical: ‘On the one hand, to establish a centre of collective selfexpression
for the workers; on the other, to break down specialisation in the
theatre.’ 45 For Kerzhentsev, it was important that this new theatre follow the
‘principle of amateurism’, in which actors avoided professionalisation in
order to keep their proximity to the masses; he hoped that audiences of the
future would not say ‘I am going to see something’ but ‘I am going to participate
in something.’ 46 Unlike the sets of Mayakovsky and Meyerhold, those
of Proletkult theatre are never photographed as environments in their own
right and are strikingly meagre – planks, ladders, simple risers and painted
back- cloths, as in the numerous examples reproduced in Huntly Carter’s
The New Theatre and Cinema of Soviet Russia (1924).
Despite economic hardships, amateur theatre proliferated across the
country after 1917; the formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky noted that ‘Drama
circles were multiplying more rapidly than protozoa. Not the lack of fuel,
nor the lack of food, nor the Entente – no, nothing can stop their growth.’ 47
Carter reported that ‘In Kostroma alone there are 600 village dramatic
circles. In the Nishni- Novgorod district there are about 900.’ 48 Workers
Proletkult theatre: Eisenstein’s production of Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s Enough Stupidity in Every
Wise Man, 1923. The sign reads ‘Religion is the opiate of the people’.
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