THE OCTOBER COUP AND PUPPET THEATRE

(Case investigation)

Tatyana Kuzovchikova

For puppet theatre in Russia in the 1910–1920s, trying its hand at avant-garde was far from successful: the most vivid representatives emigrated without leaving any followers behind. The strongest impact on puppet theatre was made by Soviet power, which perceived it as “a younger brother” of drama theatre. Consequently, puppet theatre inherited from drama theatre the repertory system and permanent buildings, specialization of labor (traditionally, the puppeteer had to combine all the skills), professional education, and even the Stanislavsky system. Also, at that time puppet theatre was assigned its audience – children, as well as educational functions. The exemplary model was formed: the State Central Puppet Theatre led by Sergei Obraztsov. In Leningrad in 1959, Mikhail Korolyov founded a professional school – currently the Department of Puppet Theatre at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts. At a certain historic stage all these reforms sharply increased the artistic level and position of Soviet puppet theatre, solidified its place in the international arena, enriching the history of theatre with a number of legendary names and titles. At the same time puppet theatre in Russia – much earlier than drama theatre – was heavily indoctrinated by ideology and excluded from the context of the general European theatre, sharply changing the direction of creative searches. Formally, Russian puppet theatre made an instant jump from the traditional culture to the Soviet era, evading the temptations of theatre experiments.

It was in the context of the establishment of director’s theatre that Russian puppet theatre, as well as its European counterpart, revealed its potential at the beginning of the 20th century. The marionette, followed by other systems of puppetry, gradually attracted the attention of theatre practitioners, leveled with live actors, as a result of which theoretical consideration of this ancient, traditional kind of theatre and its artistic specifics began. Reviews and testaments of that time convince us that Russian puppet theatre could have developed in alternative ways.

The term neurospaste-puppeteer, frequently used in the articles of that time, is often regarded in the context of the phenomenon of directing: as a fully legitimate author, creator, and manager of his or her own artistic worlds. Unlike authors-directors, authors-neuropaths are completely free in their creative imagination, because they create the reality of playing on their own and inhabit it with the characters of that particular texture, scale, and volume which they find necessary. That is the conclusion made by the two key figures of Russian puppet avant-garde of the early 20th century: a historian of theatre and dance, literary and theatre critic Yulia Leonidovna Slonimskaya (1887–1957) and actor of the Chamber (Kamerny) Theatre Vladimir Alexandrovich Sokolov (1889–1962). Both of them left Russia soon after the revolutionary events, had successful careers in the West, and therefore were forgotten in their homeland.