Less Drama, More Action: Proletkul't Theater's Second Impulse

• In Event: The Radical Utopianism of the Soviet Twenties II: Bodies

Abstract

Less drama, more action [deistvo]—this is the programmatic by which an elusive group called the Deistvenniki, associated with the dissident Proletarian Culture movement or Proletkul't, made its appearance in proletarian theaters and workers’ clubs during the NEP era. While accompanied by great controversy, the Deistvenniki ultimately helped facilitate a sweeping transition from both traditional ‘dramatic’ performance and the spontaneous form of post-revolutionary mass spectacle, to a collective, yet formally rigorous praxis that was anchored in what the Proletkul't called ‘self-activity’ [samodeiatel'nost']. My paper situates the Deistvenniki’s intervention as part of a series of attempts to re-actualize the Proletkul't's approach, articulated first in 1917, to the ‘proletarianization’ of knowledge and cultural forms via a theoretical and practical work towards their generalization, i.e., their despecialization and bottom-up reconstruction, at the site of the NEP-era workers’ club. Drawing on examples from Moscow, Baku, and potentially, Weimar Germany, I consider how theater's reconstitution as a medium of ‘action’ crystallized new and highly inventive genres, such as the living newspaper or the agit-trial. Further, I show how its implied structural critique of formal protocols of mimesis and representation proved pertinent across heterogeneous political contexts during the Interwar period.

Author

• Elisa Purschke, Princeton U