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Montage of Attractions: For Enough Stupidity in Every Wiseman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Sergei Eisenstein
Translated by
Daniel Gerould
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Extract

Just a few words. The theatrical program of the Proletkult does not involve the “utilization of the values of the past” or the “invention of new forms of theatre” but the abolition of the very institution of the theatre as such, replacing it with a showplace for achievements in the theatre or with an instrument for raising the standard of training of the masses in their day-to-day life. The real task of the scientific section of the Proletkult in the field of the theatre is to organize theatre studios and to work out a scientific system for raising this standard.

All the rest that is being done is “provisional”; to fulfill secondary, not basic, aims of the Proletkult. The “provisional” runs along two lines under the general heading of revolutionary content.

1. Representational-narrative theatre (static, real-life—the right wing): the Proletkult's Zori, Lena, and a series of not fully realized productions of the same type—this being the direction of the former Workers Theatre with the Central Committee of Proletkult.

Type
Popular Entertainments and The Avant-Garde
Information
The Drama Review , Volume 18 , Issue 1: Popular Entertainments , March 1974 , pp. 77 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 The Drama Review

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References

All rights reserved. ©l974 by Daniel Gerould.

1 Zori Proletkulti was a performance by the Proletkult, in which the poetry of proletarian poets was dramatized. It was intended as an answer to Meyerhold's production in 1920 of Emile Verhaeren's Les Aubes (Zori).

2 A play by Velerian Pletnyov about events on the Lena River in Siberia in 1912. It was presented for the opening of the Moscow Proletkult Theatre in 1921. Eisenstein was one of the artists who worked on the staging.

3 The Mexican was a dramatization of a Jack London story. It was Eisenstein's first production (with Smyshlyaev) at the Proletkult in 1921. Eisenstein also did the costumes and scenery.

4 Valentin Smyshlyaev was an actor and director from the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre, who worked with the Proletkult and wrote a book The Technique of Constructing a Stage Production, published by the Proletkult. In 1923, he directed The Taming of the Shrew at the MAT.

5 Presented at the Proletkult in 1922.

6 Abbreviation for the mobile troupe of the Moscow Proletkult Theatre.

7 Alexander Ostyzhev was a well-known actor of the period who appeared as Romeo, Othello, and in many other classic roles.

8 A reference to the dramatization of Dickens’ The Cricket on the Hearth presented by the First Studio of the MAT in 1915.

* EDITOR'S NOTE: The material in italics represents a supplement to Eisenstein's list of 25 attractions. The supplemental information was reconstructed by the still surviving participants of the performance —M. S. Gomorov, A. P. Kurbatov, A. I. Levshin, V. P. Sharuev, I. F. Yasykanov, under the general direction of M. M. Shtraukh.