Theater of the Revolution

Theater of the Revolution

 

one of the first Soviet drama theaters. Opened in Moscow on Oct. 29, 1922, the theater was created as a result of the merging of the Terevsat (Theater of Revolutionary Satire) with a number of other theaters. From 1922 to 1924 it was headed by V. E. Meyerhold, who produced Toller’s The Machine-wreckers and Man and the Masses, Os-trovskii’s A Profitable Post, and Faiko’s Lake Liul’. The theater’s principal directors later included V. M. Bebutov, A. L. Gripich, A. D. Popov (who from 1930 to 1935 played an important role in the theater’s development), and N. V. Petrov. Plays were also staged by Iu. A. Zavadskii, A. M. Lobanov, and A. D. Dikii.

The theater’s leading actors included M. I. Babanova, M. F. Astangov, Iu. S. Glizer, M. M. Shtraukh, D. N. Orlov, and S. A. Martinson. Major plays staged by the theater included Faiko’s The Man With the Portfolio (1928), Pogodin’s Poem of the Axe (1931), My Friend (1932), and After the Ball (1934), Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1935), Arbuzov’s Tania (1939), and Voitekhov and Lench’s Pavel Grekov (1938). In 1937, V. I. Lenin was portrayed there for the first time in any theater by M. M. Shtraukh in N. V. Petrov’s staging of Korneichuk’s Truth.

From 1941 to 1943 most of the theater’s company played in Tashkent. In 1943, after returning to Moscow, it merged with a theater company that had used its facilities during the war, using the name Moscow Theater of Drama. The combined company was called the Moscow Theater of Drama until 1954, when it was renamed the Moscow Mayakovsky Theater. N. P. Okhlopkov headed the theater from 1943 to 1966.