Download or read book Theatre As Action written by Lars Kleberg and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1993-05-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the 1917 revolution, Russian and Soviet avant-garde theatre attempted to create a new art for post-revolutionary society. This reconsideration of the Russian avant-garde theatre investigates the burgeoning new drama/theatre forms of the period. Kleberg considers assumptions made about the audience and by the audience, and seeks to determine whether discrepancies existed between the two. Offering fresh insights into the modernist period of Russian theatre, Theatre as Action provides a new typology of the stage/audience relationship in modernist Russian theatre. Constructivism of the 1920's is discussed on light of the plays of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Treytykov. The relation of the Soviet Russian avant-garde to the aesthetics of Bertold Brecht is also examined. This original, comprehensive work is a major contribution to our understanding of the confrontation of the ideal and the reality of Soviet 1920's, revealing the Wagnerian and Symbolist utopia beneath, and its crisis. It will be of particular interest to students of literature and drama.