Soviet Productions of American Plays at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre in the 1920s and 1930s

FAIN: FT-61652-14

Dassia N. Posner
Northwestern University (Evanston, IL 60208-0001)

This grant will allow me to launch research on a book-length study of the Moscow Kamerny Theatre. My research will begin with a journal article that analyzes director Alexander Tairov's productions at the Kamerny of American Expressionist plays by Eugene O'Neill and Sophie Treadwell in the 1920s and 30s. I will investigate how and why Tairov emphasized these plays' anti-capitalist themes in an attempt to satisfy the ideological demands of the Soviet state, while also fostering a vital cross-cultural dialogue about societal oppression as it relates more broadly to class, race, gender, and artistic agency. My aim is to reverse historical erasures of the Kamerny's significance and to restore the innovations of its artists to the historical record by investigating their prolonged collaboration in the context of the plays they staged, the cultures they bridged, and the tumultuous period in which they lived and worked.

Associated Products

America and the Individual: The Hairy Ape and Machinal at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre (Article)
Title: America and the Individual: The Hairy Ape and Machinal at the Moscow Kamerny Theatre
Author: Dassia N. Posner
Abstract: Between 1926 and 1934 the Moscow Kamerny Theatre staged a cycle of six American plays: Eugene O’Neill's The Hairy Ape, Desire under the Elms, and All God's Chillun Got Wings; Sophie Treadwell's Machinal; Rosita, a stage adaptation of a Hollywood film; and John Dos Passos's Fortune Heights. In this article Dassia N. Posner analyzes and contextualizes two of these productions: The Hairy Ape (1926) and Machinal (1933). By the mid-1920s, Kamerny Theatre director Alexander Tairov was under intense pressure to stage work that aligned with the Soviet Union's political goals. A significant portion of the Kamerny's repertoire had long consisted of foreign plays that celebrated the individual's struggle against oppression. The Hairy Ape and Machinal provided Tairov with a unique opportunity to combine artistic, political, and human relevance in a way he had not achieved before, using the artistic language of the theatre's earlier stylistic and acting innovations. Drawing on rich archival sources, Posner illuminates ways in which stylistic juxtaposition allowed these productions to address a specific political context while also reflecting on oppression more broadly as it relates to class, gender, national origin, artistic freedom, and individual thought. Dassia N. Posner is Associate Professor of Theatre and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. Her books include The Director's Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-theatre-quarterly/article/america-and-the-individual-the-hairy-ape-and-machinal-at-the-moscow-kamerny-theatre/81A461401445FD1C6D1A8EEC596C5487
Access Model: Purchase
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: New Theatre Quarterly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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