Down with the Foxtrot! Concepts of Satire in the Soviet Theatre of the 1920s

Abstract

The first anniversary in 1918 of the October Revolution was the occasion for the performance in Petrograd of what is generally held to be the earliest substantial post-Revolutionary satirical work, Mayakovsky’s anti-religious pageant Mystery-Bouffe (‘Misteriyabuff’). But such innovative epic undertakings, like the new outdoor spectacles for mass audiences, were to have little significant impact on theatrical developments during the mid-1920s period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), not least because of the financial and organisational difficulties these productions presented. Instead, smaller-scale events — such as Mayakovsky himself would also contribute to — became the real focus for satirical work during most of the 1920s.