SOCIALIST THEATRES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 47, 26 January 1937, Page 14

SOCIALIST THEATRES.

TJie place of the Socialist theatre in the life of the U.S.S.Ii. is a most remarkable one, declares Mr Huntly Carter. The theatre is' cultivating the body and brains of a community resembling an enormous Socialist family, as well as the spirit of the art. The Soviet theatre has fought its way persistently agaiust gigantic odds —vicissitudes, struggles and hardships arising from the revolution, civil war, famine and the subsequent events of economic recovery and construction —to universal recognition. The principles that have not yet received full attention are the creative role that the Soviet theatre is playing in the life of a new vast civilisation culture ; the new positive Soviet system of the drama, which has laiely arisen and is parallel with past great systems —Greek and others. The original bases of the Soviet theatre were the social principles, that the theatre is an organic part of. the community, and must, take a direct part in enabling it to work itself out in a new form; that there are some 160,000,000 citizens in the U.S.S.R.; that they all have the virtues of the theatre and arts in them, that the theatre should be entrusted to them in order that they may mould their virtues with it. The results of the application of these principles have been phenomenal. There has been an unparalleled spread of the theatre to which social factors and State recognition and aid have largely contributed. In 1910 there were but seven theatres that mattered in Moscow. In 1914 there were 149 theatres in Russia and by L 930 there was a deluge of official theatrical figures- In the 1.92 T-28 season the attendances at professional theatres alone were 6,741,164. In 1932 this total had jumped to 6,399,700. It was then estimated that in five years the total would be 28,000,000. Last year no fewer than 8000 new theatres and cinemas were building or built, bringing the total of the theatres and cinemas up to 44,800. To-day there are 15,000 amateur theatrical societies in the Soviet Union, with a membership of 300,000. It is claimed that Soviet Russia is. a theatre of theatres given to social service, and that the State recognition and supervision factors serve to promote and perfect both the social and professional interests of the . theatre. There is a positive Soviet system of the drama, and it is a true ideological one. It is the system, of. the dramatisation of a definite, ideological principle—the principle of Socialist realism.