Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
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artificial hells<br />
wrote plays collectively, <strong>the</strong> most successful <strong>of</strong> which passed into <strong>the</strong><br />
Proletkult repertory for o<strong>the</strong>rs to perform. 49 However, <strong>the</strong> extent to which<br />
<strong>the</strong>se plays matched <strong>the</strong> innovations <strong>of</strong> pre- revolutionary <strong>the</strong>atre is debatable.<br />
Scripts tended to be burdened by ideological affi rmation, such as The<br />
Bricklayer (1918), by <strong>the</strong> Proletkult activist Pavel Bessalko. As Katerina<br />
Clark wryly observes: ‘Written in praise <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> new age <strong>of</strong> technology <strong>and</strong><br />
proletarian hegemony, it concerns <strong>the</strong> wife <strong>of</strong> an architect who, predictably,<br />
becomes disaffected with her bourgeois husb<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> runs <strong>of</strong>f with a bricklayer<br />
to join <strong>the</strong> revolutionary movement – to her greater fulfi lment, no<br />
doubt, but not to <strong>the</strong> satisfaction <strong>of</strong> critics, who found <strong>the</strong> plot poorly motivated<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> play terribly dull.’ 50<br />
Such an emphasis on social content over artistic form was a problem for<br />
pr<strong>of</strong>essional <strong>the</strong>atre too. Anatoly Lunacharsky, Lenin’s key cultural advisor,<br />
believed in preserving classical culture (such as <strong>the</strong> Bolshoi Ballet <strong>and</strong><br />
Mariinsky Theatre) since <strong>the</strong> proletariat were uninspired by contemporary<br />
political performances:<br />
And imagine, comrade Kerzhentsev, I have not only seen how bored <strong>the</strong><br />
proletariat was at <strong>the</strong> production <strong>of</strong> a few ‘revolutionary’ plays, but have<br />
even read <strong>the</strong> statement <strong>of</strong> sailors <strong>and</strong> workers asking that <strong>the</strong>se revolutionary<br />
spectacles be discontinued <strong>and</strong> replaced by performances <strong>of</strong><br />
Gogol <strong>and</strong> Ostrovsky! 51<br />
In turn, Kerzhentsev reports on a competition for a new repertoire <strong>of</strong> socialist<br />
plays, but <strong>the</strong> quality <strong>of</strong> entries was so poor that <strong>the</strong> jury struggled to fi nd<br />
works, even from Europe, with a suffi ciently correct ideological bias. Predictably,<br />
Kerzhentsev did not feel this to be a problem, just symptomatic <strong>of</strong> a period<br />
<strong>of</strong> transition: ‘a large part <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>m [i.e. <strong>the</strong>atrical works] are not <strong>of</strong> a suffi ciently<br />
high level in <strong>the</strong> artistic sense. That is underst<strong>and</strong>able: proletarian culture is<br />
only now being born. Proletarian <strong>the</strong>atre has not had <strong>the</strong> chance to express<br />
itself; <strong>the</strong>re were no conditions for its existence in historical reality.’ 52<br />
However, <strong>the</strong> backlash against <strong>the</strong>se political requirements was already<br />
visible in <strong>the</strong> early 1930s. In 1931, <strong>the</strong> author Evgeny Zamyatin noted that<br />
‘<strong>the</strong> repertory is now <strong>the</strong> weakest spot in Russian <strong>the</strong>atre. It seems that<br />
something quite inconceivable has taken place: it was much easier to move<br />
<strong>the</strong> tremendous weight <strong>of</strong> economics <strong>and</strong> industry than a seemingly light<br />
<strong>and</strong> e<strong>the</strong>real substance – such as dramatics.’ 53 For Zamyatin, <strong>the</strong> state<br />
dem<strong>and</strong> for drama dealing with contemporary issues had fuelled an<br />
epidemic <strong>of</strong> bad plays; he notes that, <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> longest running productions in<br />
Moscow during 1930, ‘only one treated current problems such as industrialisation,<br />
<strong>the</strong> kolkhozes, etc.’ 54 It is telling that one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> great novels <strong>of</strong><br />
this period, Andréy Platonov’s The Foundation Pit (1930), addresses<br />
precisely <strong>the</strong>se <strong>the</strong>mes, but as a fi nely judged satire <strong>of</strong> Stalin’s forced<br />
programme <strong>of</strong> collectivisation.<br />
55