Authors

Jesse Gardiner¹;  ¹ University of St Andrews, UK

Discussion

This paper discusses the revival of Soviet avant-garde theatre during the post-Stalin Thaw (1953-64). It argues that the revival of avant-garde theatre disrupted the normative practices and hierarchical attitudes that had become entrenched during the Stalinist period, such as the canonization of Stanislavskian realism and the Moscow Art Theatre, and the exclusion of avant-garde artists and performers from the public sphere. In the process, my paper links the deconstruction of the Stalinist aesthetic system in the theatre to the de-Stalinization of Soviet society under Nikita Khrushchev. The Thaw was a dynamic and ambiguous period when different cultures, genres and theatre practices merged together on stage to create new modes of visibility for spectators. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s theorisation of aesthetics and politics, this paper will explore these mergers and discuss the ways in which the legacies of Stalinism were deconstructed on the Soviet stage.