Blue Blouse
The Blue Blouse (Russian: Синяя блуза, Sinyaya Bluza) was an influential agitprop theatre collective in the early Soviet Union.[1] Boris Yuzhanin created the first Blue Blouse troupe under the auspices of the Moscow Institute of Journalism in 1923.[2] Their example encouraged similar workers' theatre companies across the country and worldwide; by 1927 there were more than 5,000 Blue Blouse troupes in the Soviet Union with more than 100,000 members.[2] In the autumn of that year, the original troupe began a tour in Erwin Piscator's theatre in Berlin that provoked a rapid growth of agitprop troupes across Weimar Germany.[3] The blue workers' uniforms in which the actors performed gave the troupe its name, under which they also published a magazine, which contained scripts and detailed descriptions of staging, costumes, and the troupe's other theatrical techniques, along with news reports and current affairs. Its variety style made many demands on its performers, requiring "a young deft man trained in physical culture, trained in the striking word, in the cheerful, bold and hard-hitting song and couplet, in the contemporary rhythm of the grotesque and simplistic," its magazine explained. The rehearsal process was extremely rigorous, requiring that actors stay physically and mentally alert through a strict exercise program and by keeping up with the political topics of the day. 1927 marked the end of the Blue Blouse organisation when it was forced to merge with the more orthodox Workers' Youth Theatre (TRAM).[2]
[edit] See also
- Left Column theater troupe
[edit] References
- ^ Drain (1995, 181-183). Members of the troupe were called Синеблузники, sinebluzniki.
- ^ a b c Drain (1995, 183).
- ^ Erwin Piscator's Red Revue, staged three years before the Blue Blouse tour, had provided a similar model for imitation to these groups. See Piscator (1980, 78-84), Willett (1978, 110), Bradby & McCormick (1978), and Stourac and McCreery (1986).
[edit] Sources
- Bradby, David, and John McCormick. 1978. People's Theatre. London: Croom Helm and Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 085664501X.
- Braun, Edward. 1982. The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413463001.
- Drain, Richard, ed. 1995. Twentieth-Century Theatre: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415096197.
- Piscator, Erwin. 1980. The Political Theatre. Trans. Hugh Rorrison. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413335003. Originally published in 1929; revised edition 1963.
- Rorrison, Hugh. 1980. Editorial notes. In Piscator (1980).
- Rudnitsky, Konstantin. 1988. Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde. Trans. Roxane Permar. Ed. Lesley Milne. London: Thames and Hudson. Rpt. as Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905-1932. New York: Abrams. ISBN 0500281955.
- Schechter, Joel, ed. 2003. Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook. Worlds of Performance Ser. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415258308.
- Stourac, Richard, and Kathleen McCreery. 1986. Theatre as a Weapon: Workers' Theatre in the Soviet Union, Germany and Britain, 1917-1934. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0710097700.
- Van Gysegheim, Andre. 1943. Theatre in Soviet Russia. London: Faber.
- Willett, John. 1978. Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety 1917-1933. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. ISBN 0306807246.
