RUSSIA AMUSES ITSELF

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3251, 5 November 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

RUSSIA AMUSES ITSELF

PROPAGANDA PLAYS AND GAMES. "PARK OF CULTURE" vgk (By a Correspondent.) The earnest student of the Drama in Russia in a hot summer finds that he has to modify some of his earnestness, and flow more gently with the stream; of popular life. The "Great Theatre" in Moscow (its vast opera and ballet house) is closed. Some of the leading companies are away, or are rehearsing autumn programmes, or are playing in " summer theatres " —though it is characteristic that Meyerhold, the advanced expressionists producer, continues his own theatre, and that, on the August night that I wanted to see the play there, the entire house had been bought by the workers of a certain factory. For the study of "drama" in its strict sense one has to substitute the more comprehensive term "amusement." Two things are notable:—how large a part games play in it, and how successfully the theatre has been brought to the people in the open air. Bathing was always a feature of Russian life, but it is something strikingly new that the sports of rowing, fencing, tennis, running, and gymnastics should be actively and eagerly practised, and ""taught by competent instructors. In the enormous " Park of Rest and Culture" in Moscow " culture " is represented by games of open-air chess, open-air orchestral concerts, and various sideshows and educational films; but of " rest" there seems to be none. The predominant impression of the place is of a huge sports ground. On the running track a girl instructor teaches a class of men the technique of the start of a sprint race. (A hundred yards down the track one recognises a word looking quaint in its Russian lettering—" Pheeneesh.") There are acres of gymnasts and netball players. Men's rowing fours and eights—and women's rowing fours and eights—slide up and down the Moskva River. An all-Union team of the United States of Soviet Russia recently defeated Turkey at Association football. " SUMMER THEATRE." To remain side by side with these attractions, the theatre itself comes out into the open air. The "summer theatre" has two important advantages. It is cheap to build, and it is cool. It consists of a roofed-in stage (with fairly full lighting and scenechanging paraphernalia), and a large roofed-in auditorium without either side walls or back wall. The entire structure is of wood, and has wooden seating, and is capable of holding anything up to a couple of thousand people. A London County Councilobjection to such a building would be that wooden structures are liable to take fire. A Russian answer to this objection would be that an audience can disperse within a few seconds, as it has no walls to contain it. Such theatres can be run up cheaply and quickly whenever and wherever wanted. are a couple of them in the park made out of the garden of the late Dowager Empress in the Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. One of them plays light operettas: the other is a music hall for variety turns. A strangely familiar light opera, called " Roz Manee," has been on the bill since a year ago.

In Moscow another garden has another couple of such theatres, and an orchestra plays among the leafage of the garden to regale the audience in the entr'actes. The remote but prosperous town of Rostovoa-Don has a beautiful and well-kept garden in its centre, a nightly orchestral concert there, and an admirable orchestra again open-air. And the town of Kieff, though much decayed when compared with its more modern rivals, has also its open-air concerts and its open-air music hall. PROPAGANDA GALORE. They are also, with the exception of the purely musical celebrations, and of the classic plays of Gogol, Tolstoy, and writers of a past generation (that are now usually played intact), still shot through and through with propaganda. Modern plays have as a large part of their, theme either Communism, National Defence, or the Five Year Plan. Operettas allude to it. The clowns in the circuses break off their rtiolre serious busfiness of falling off bicycles to deliver speeches in favour of tractors, and even a special travelling gypsy theatre troupe that did some magnificent singing offered large patches of boredom where the gypsies were urged by a Communist to beat their banjoes into ploughshares or learn to make motor radiators in the Amo works like responsible citizens.

It goes without saying that this pre-occupation with politics has no attraction for the outside visitor in search of art. It is done crudely, transparently, and some|snes childishly, and can make long 4l passages of the plays insufferably dull. But it is no more than fair to say that this point of view does not appear to be appreciated by the Russians themselves. The propaganda is listened to with attention and applause. I asked many Russians both this year and last if they liked having their theatres turned into extra classrooms. Enthusiasts would go to the extreme of retorting that the functions of art and of propaganda were alike: but even the very much more reasoned replies allowed that Russia was so far wrapped up in its present struggle for production that plays that dealt with it were truly reflecting contemporary life. In a word, it is probably still true to say that Russians are being dosed with no more propaganda than they themselves are eager arid interested to absorb.