Dramaturgical Page
Setting
In October 1917, the Bolshevik Party, one of many smaller communist parties in existence at the time, led by Vladimir Lenin, staged a coup after centuries of rule by the Romanov dynasty. Immediately, this led to a bloody Civil War, which saw the Bolsheviks taking power. To attempt to ease the transition towards becoming a Communist nation, Lenin and the Bolsheviks created the New Economic Plan (NEP), which combined some elements of Capitalism with Communism. During the 1920s, due to more relaxed policies, the Soviet Union experienced unprecedented cultural freedom, prior to Stalin coming to power. All forms of art- literature, film, theater, painting, music, etc., flourished with many different avant-garde movements becoming prominent. 10, 9, Too Late, Blast Off! takes place at the height of this boom, but also when the realities of the new Bolshevik regime and the prospect of Stalinism have started to loom over the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940)
Mikhail Bulgakov was a prominent playwright and novelist during the 1920s and 30s in Russia, despite much of his work being censored or not even being published in his lifetime. He started his career as a doctor during the Russian Civil War. His play, The White Guard, became a hit at the famed Moscow Art Theater and, ironically, one of Stalin's favorites. After many of his works became censored, including Heart of a Dog, he personally wrote to Stalin, asking to leave the Soviet Union. He was denied this and ultimately, worked in various positions at theaters in Moscow. Today, he is most well known for his novel, The Master and Margarita, which was posthumously published during the Thaw in the 1960s. The novel, a sharp critique of Stalinism, was written over the last decade of Bulgakov's life and the manuscript was preserved by his wife.
Heart of a Dog
Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog follows the bourgeois Dr. Preobrazhensky, who finds a stray dog, Sharik, and implants human glands onto him. After this operation, Sharik rapidly transforms into a human, Sharikov, who drinks, smokes, and wreaks havoc in the doctor’s apartment. Sharikov fits into the new Soviet society, but Preobrazhensky is horrified with his creation. Ultimately, he takes out the glands from Sharikov, who reverts back to a dog. Bulgakov wrote this novella in 1925, but it was not published until perestroika in the 1980s. It found resounding success because many of the issues Bulgakov satirized were still prominent in the Soviet Union sixty years later. Since its publishing, Heart of a Dog has been adapted into several stage plays, a film, and an opera.
Aleksei Tolstoy (1883-1945)
Aleksei Tolstoy was born into Russian nobility and supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War. He left Russia in exile and lived in Paris and then, Berlin, during the first years of the Soviet Union. Wanting to return home to Russia, he wrote Aelita in 1922, one of the first prominent pieces of Science Fiction published in the Soviet Union. The novel and its subsequent film (1925) became hugely popular, leading to a successful career. He spent the rest of his career writing many children's novels, thrillers, and other fiction. He was lauded by the Bolsheviks during his career and the irony of his noble background led to his nickname: "Comrade Count." Currently, the award in Russia for the best piece of Science Fiction is called the Aelita Award.
Aelita
Tolstoy’s Aelita follows Los, an engineer, who builds a spacecraft to go to Mars after the death of his wife. He finds Gusev, a soldier who fought with the Red Army during the Civil War, to help him on the journey. They travel to Mars where they learn about the advanced Martian society. They meet Tuskub, the ruler of Mars, and his daughter, Aelita. They see that Mars is actually a feudalistic, capitalistic society, with the lower classes being forced into manual labor. Gusev inspires a communist revolution, which fails, as Gusev and Los flee Mars. Aelita was extremely popular at the time of publishing and is best known for its subsequent film adaptation, which departs from the plot of the novel, focusing more on life in Soviet Russia.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)
Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the largest figures of the Russian Futurist movement, which started in the early 1910s. His radical plays and poems emphasized modernity and urbanity while rejecting prior literary traditions. He read many of his early works at the Stray Dog Cabaret, a basement cellar in St. Petersburg, which became a cultural center for the new generation of poets, writers, musicians, and artists. When the Revolution came in 1917, Mayakovsky was an adamant supporter, writing poetry and slogans that welcomed the new Communist ideology. However, he soon became disillusioned by the ideals of the Revolution, writing several pieces satirizing and critiquing the new social order of the Soviet Union, most famously, his play, The Bedbug. He sadly died from suicide in 1930. There has been a lot of speculation as to the reason why, some citing his disillusionment and others citing a failed love affair. Currently in Russia, the dual nature of his work has led him to become an interesting figure- many people from older generations bemoan his work after being forced to memorize his patriotic poetry, while others see him as a radical, adventurous artist who was lost due to the rise of Stalinism.
The Bedbug
Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug is a play that satirizes NEP culture in the 1920s Soviet Union. It tells the story of Prisypkin, a NEPman, someone who took advantage of the capitalistic opportunities during the NEP. At the start of the play, Prisypkin is getting married into the Renaissance family, despite his love affair with a worker, Zoya. The wedding goes awry when a fire starts, killing everyone except Prisypkin, who is frozen alongside a bedbug. He is thawed 50 years later, when the world has achieved a communist utopia. The people in the utopia are horrified of Prisypkin because his attitude and manners do not fit in a utopian society. He ends up locked in a zoo alongside the bedbug, as a relic of a prior time. This was one of Mayakovsky’s last major works and has received many stagings and a film adaptation.