Late Beginning
Russia came late to theater. By the time of the first professional theater performances in Russia in the mid-17th century, the Spanish, English and French theaters had already experienced their Golden Ages and produced playwrights such as Shakespeare, Calderone and Moliere.
Foreign Influences
From its beginning Russian theater has been influenced by foreign influences. It was not until the twentieth century that Russia became a world theatrical force. In the 1600's German, French and Italian actors and directors were invited to help create a Russian theater. Foreign companies visited Russia throughout the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, Russia repaid this debt by influencing world theater practice - despite the 70-year hiatus of cultural isolation during the Soviet era.
Internal Politics
Throughout tzarist history, the theater was affected by the political concerns of the Church and the court. Later the Communist Party influenced the form and content of theater. With the fall of communism, government officials in charge of subsidies and directors of theaters, free of state censorship but mindful of audience preferences and responding to the forces of the market, have become the arbiters of theater repertory and practice. One of the most interesting issues in the contemporary Russian theater is how the post-Soviet repertory "family" company system fares in the new market economy.
The earliest entertainers were the skomoroki, itinerant court -attached jesters-musicians- singers-story-tellers, who often performed with bears and puppets, perhaps as early as the tenth Century. The theater's roots were folkloric rather than liturgical.
15th Century
The church was by turns friendly and hostile to the theater. They abhorred the skomoroki but encouraged church-sponsored theater. One of their earliest predictions in the 1400s was the church produced "Fiery Furnace" in Kiev where townspeople masquerading as Chaldens burned three choirboys impersonating Israelite youth in a pulpit-cauldron. (The play was reproduced by Eienstein in his film Ivan the Terrible).
16th Centuries
The skomoroki were officially attached to the court in 1572, but their performances were forbidden by order of Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1648. The people thought they possessed magical power and Alexei's advisors viewed them as a threat to the court. They fled to the north, continued to perform in the countryside and centuries later their skills reappeared in public performance in the circus, the fairground balagan and variety arts estrada theater.
The Kiev Academy helped establish a formal dramatic repertory in late 17th and early 18th Century. Their plays on biblical and historic themes, expressed pro-tzarist sympathies and incorporated realistic elements, songs and dances. Some private theaters were built in Kiev, in Saikonospanssky cloister, in Novgorod seminaries and at the bishop's house in Rostov. Novices were actors and performed in plays such "Sinner," "Christ Christmas and Resurrection," "Saintly Martyr Evodia," "The Second Lord's Advent."
1672
In 1672, Tzar Alexei Mikhailovich, who had banned the skomoroki in 1648, changed his attitude toward the theater and invited a German Lutheran pastor, Johann Gottfried, to stage a play in honor of his son's birth, the future Peter the Great. (A ten-hour presentation of The Comedy of Esther). Alexei's daughter, Princess Sophia Alekseevna, was the author of the first Russian tragedy "Martyr Ekaterina." After the death of Alexei in 1674, the theater was closed.
1701-1704
Moscow
Peter the Great sponsored the first secular public theater under the leadership of the German actor -manager Johan Kunst. Plays were produced in German and Russian. Attendance was encouraged by eliminating road taxes on performance days, offering free admissions and issuing Royal decrees.
Peter favored plays dealing with the victories and deeds of the Russian army and allegories of his reforms performed by the students of the Greek-Slavonic Academy which had been established in 1701.
A theater constructed in Red Square in 1702 called "The Comedy Chramina" ("The Temple of Comedy") was used by Kunst's German toupe and performed plays by Moliere, Calderone and other European playwrights. Comic interludes were popular. No formal theatrical tradition was established and the theater was closed in 1704.
1710-1714
Saint Petersburg
From 1710 to 1714 chivalrous romance plays (produced by Princess Natalia, Peter the Great's younger sister) adapted from French and Italian poetic sources were the most popular form of secular drama in Russia.
Foreign Influences
1730
During the reign of Empress Anna visiting Italian artists introduced new theater forms and practices including opera, commedia dell'arte, perspective scenery techniques, and an acrobatic form of ballet. The Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Landet, introduced a more graceful ballet style, which later developed into the great Russian ballet tradition. Caroline Neuber, a German actress, established a classical dramatic theater at court in 1739-1740. These lavish techniques were looked upon as foreign influences by the Russian court. A Russian tradition was yet to be established.
1756
Empress Elizabeth invited the Yaroslav actor Fyodor Volkov , his brother Grigory and the dramatist director Alexander Sumarokov to establish the first permanent
professional theater in Russia in 1756 on Vaslievsky Island in St Petersburg. Plays were written in Russian by Sumarokov and Lomonosov and others but they were
conceived in a lusterless neoclassic pattern in imitation of the French comedy and tragedy and failed to remain in the Russian repertory.
Catherine loved the theater and it thrived during her reign. She viewed the theater much as Peter I had. She viewed it as a way to teach her courtiers her version of
enlightenment and to instill patriotism and loyalty to the monarchy. To this end she wrote many forgettable plays. She inaugurated the Imperial Theater Administration which
for nearly a century monopolized control of the Russian theater.
In 1777, Catherine authorized the building of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in 1779 added the Imperial School for the training of Russian actors, singers and dancers.
During Catherine's reign, Denis Fonvizin wrote "The Brigadier" (1769) and "The Minor" (1791) establishing the Russian satirical comedy of manners and the first steps toward a national comedy of social realism with native character, linguistic and topical elements. This play is still regularly performed on Russian stages and remains a Russian favorite.
Catherine's 1762 charter freed the nobles of many of their state obligations and opened the way for the formation of the serf theaters, some of which were well equipped and
lavishly appointed. They eventually grew to 173 venues.
Nicholas I (1825-1855)
Under Alexander I and Nicholas I the number of theaters increased, "Russian Realism" became the leading aesthetic principle and important non-imitative plays were written in the Russian language.
1800
By the time Alexander ascended the throne in 1800, various formal theater venues existed:
Hermitage Court Theater in the Winter Palace
Imperial Theaters in Moscow (Bolshoi) and St Petersburg (Maly)
Popular theaters organized by state government as non-court theaters
Provincial Theaters organized by town governments
Private theaters owned by nobles and manned by serfs
1827
In 1827 Tzar Nicholas I instituted the Theatrical Monopoly with a decree placing the public theatrical performances in St Petersburg and Moscow under the control of the state run Imperial theaters. By 1847 the first censorship law of 1804 had been expanded to have control over all the capital and provincial theaters and by 1848 Nicholas I's secret committee had a hegemony over these theaters. Because of the harsh strictures on the leading professional theaters, the marginal theaters (of the urban fairgrounds and pleasure gardens, the street shows and cabarets, the amateur theatricals of drawing rooms and salons and the minor theaters in the provinces ) which were less closely watched by the secret police played an important role in the development of a national theater tradition. This tradition was a source of inspiration for the avant-garde theater of the early twentieth century.
Despite government censorship, four of the greatest Russian plays were written in the second quarter of the 19th century:
1824 : Woe from Wit
Alexander Griboedev (1795-1829) wrote "Woe from Wit "in 1824, but because of trouble with censors it was not performed until 1931, two years after his death. The main character Chatsky - an angry young man who speaks his mind and what he considers to be truth and therefore is considered insane by the leaders of Moscow's hypocritical society - became a prototype for the young Russian romantic hero. Lines from the play became Russian proverbs.
1830 : Boris Godunov
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) the revered national writer, breaking with the neo-classic tradition, wrote Boris Godunov in the episodic style of Shakespeare. Written in1824. It was published six years later. This play about the pretender Dmitry, dealt with favorite topics in Russian drama and comedy - duplicity and truth and their relationship. Although the play has been staged by many generations of Russian directors, it was only really successful as the libretto for the Mussorgsky opera.
1836 : The Inspector General
In this play Nikoli Gogol (1809-1852) created another prototypical young man, Khlestakov, who in contrast to Griboedev's Chatsky cannot tell the truth, He pretends to be what he is not ( a government official) and gets away with it. The play's popularity has never diminished since its first performance in 1836. It was a favorite of Nicholas I. This play began the great Russian tradition of tragic farce. Productions of the play have been attempted by practically every famous Russian director and it has found great popularity abroad.
1849-50 : A Month in the Country
Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) wrote what is thought of as one of the first "psychological " plays. On a country estate an older married woman and her ward both vie for the heart of the same young man. Nothing much happens, but their lives are all changed in the course of what appear to be mundane conversations and prosaic actions. It continues to be part of the world repertory and is considered a precursor of Chekhov a half century too soon.
The two Imperial Theaters which dominated the dramatic stage during the 19th and early part of the 20th century were founded during the reigns of Alexander and Nicholas.
1839
Maly Theater in Moscow and Alexandrinsky in St. Petersburg
In 1804 the Moscow State Theater was formed, and in 1824 the company moved into a theater designed by Osip Bove. The theater was named the Maly ("Small") to distinguish it from the Bolshoi Theater ("Big"), used mostly for opera and ballet, and located across the Square. The Alexandrinsky Theater was completed in 1832. Designed by Carlo Rossi, the theater was named after the wife of Nicholas I. In 1839 Nicholas I gave the Imperial Theaters comprehensive statutes, which mandated the practice of the Imperial Theaters. These remained in force until 1917.
The Circus
1847
In 1847-49 a theater circus building was constructed for pantomime and circus shows and the first formal circus was established in 1877.
Mikhail Shchepkin, who started as an actor in the serf theater, first performed on the stage of the Maly Theater in Moscow in 1823. He is considered the founder of the realistic school of Russian acting and his legend and writings had great influence on Stanislavsky who was born in 1863, the year Shchepkin died. During the years he was at the Maly, the theater became world famous for its actors including the great Mocholov. During this period, the theater presented Russian neoclassic plays and the plays of Pushkin, Gogol, Schiller, Moliere and Goldoni as well as French vaudevilles and melodramas.
In the 1840s, the Maly Theater was called "the second Moscow University." It was looked to as a seat of progressive thought and a civilizing force in a society dominated by
the repressive policies of Nicholas I and the specter of serfdom. By the 1860's it had become a bourgeois theater featuring light fare and divertissements and encouraging
histrionic acting.
The realistic movements in writing, acting and stage technique begun in the first half of the nineteenth century came to fruition during the last half of the nineteenth century during the reigns of Alexander II and III.
Important plays written during this period were by Ostrovsky, and A.V. Sukhovo - Kobylin.
Alexander Sukhova-Kobylin (1817-1903) is famous for his trilogy, "Krechensky"s Wedding"(1854), "The Case" (1861), and "Tarelkin's Death" (1869). He continued the Russian tragi-farce tradition begun by Gogol and later utilized by Bulgakov and others. He used his own decades long plight to fight the bureaucratic justice system to clear his name from the false accusation of the murder of his French mistress as the basis for plays which bitterly ridiculed the hipocracy and corruption of Russian government officials and society. His plays were the basis for musicals in the 1970s. They are still revived in Russia and have been staged by Russia's leading directors including Meyerhold.
The Maly- The House of Ostovsky
1850s
In the 1850s the Russian stage was dominated by Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886).He wrote forty-seven plays, directed plays at the Maly and fought for the right of playwrights to receive royalties for their plays. He also fought valiantly but unsuccessfully to found a national theater based on artistic rather than commercial principles with a Russian repertory, realistic acting and cheap prices.
His plays were concerned with the vagaries and moral problems of of Moscow's new merchant class, the rural gentry and people of the theater. He is not well known outside
of Russia, except for his play "The Thunderstorm." In Russia his plays are still performed and he is credited with singlehandedly founding a Russian national repertory. His
plays have remained popular into the twenty-first century.
1882
On March 24, 1882, Alexander III signed a decree abolishing the monopoly of the Imperial Theaters, opening the way for public commercial theaters. This was to have no
great impact on the repertory of the Russian theaters until the Moscow Art Theater at the end of the century.
Commercial Theaters
Some of the more interesting private commercial theaters formed in this period, when life in both Moscow and St Petersburg became more diverse, rich and dynamic and
capitalism was growing fast, included:
Korsh Theater in Moscow (1882)
Founded by the stage-struck lawyer Fyodor Korsh , his theater presented the same unadventuresome theatrical fare as the Maly - French plays, vaudevilles and divertissements.
Fantastic Theater in Hermitage Garden in Moscow (1882)
This open air theater established by Mikhail Lentovsky specialized in elaborate extravaganzas with extraordinary stage devices resembling Jules Verne tales involving supernatural journeys to foreign places and planets, a popular theatrical genre of the time.
Actors
Some of the great actors of this period include:
Maria Ermolova (1853-1928). This Maly Theater actress considered the greatest tragedienne of her day. She was the first actress to receive honorary title of "People's Artist
of the Soviet Republic" (1920) as well as "Hero of Labor" (1924.)
Galikeriya Fedotova (1846-1925). A protegee of Shchepkin, Fedotova had a broader acting range than Ermolova . She excelled at comedy and drama, playing in Ostrovsky, Shakespeare and Schiller.
Alexander Lensky (1847-1908). Leading Russian actor of the period joined Maly theater in 1876 and eventually became its Director and was responsible for bringing Ibsen
to the Russian Stage.
Vera Kommizerskheva (1864-1910). Leading actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater and later director of her own theater during the symbolist pre-Revolutionary period.
1897
Konstantin Stanislavsky, a textile magnate and amateur director and actor, and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a prizewinning dramatist, critic and head of the drama section of the Philharmonic School met on June 23, 1897. Intent on reform of the theatrical practices of the day as represented by the work of both the Imperial Theaters and the private commercial theaters, they decided to form a different kind of theater which eventually became the Moscow Art Theater.
They were critical of the current state of acting, stagecraft, repertory and audience composition and were determined to affect changes in all these areas. They wanted more realistic acting and stage design and plays appealing to the growing progressive urban audience desiring more than the light fare preferred by the bourgeois audiences of the Maly and commercial theaters. Their innovations were to eventually revolutionized world theater practice.
1898
The Moscow Art Theater has its first season opening with Alexei Tolstoy's "Tzar Fyodor" and closing with Chekhov's "The Seagull."
The Twentieth Century theater in Russia is a dazzling array of "ism"s, movements, and counter movements, which include:
Moscow Jewish Theater
Studio theaters
Children's theater
Puppet theater
Estrada - theater of variety arts
The circus
The history of these stages of Russian theater is still being written. Refer to Bibliography of Russian Theater.