Chapter 4 Images and Montage: Russian Cinema and the British Stage

Abstract

The final section, sparked by newly expanding understandings of modernism, and performance studies’ fraught interpretation of liveness and mediation, takes a cross-disciplinary perspective by uncovering the importance of Russian cinema for the British stage. Grounding the argument in the vibrant history of transnational film studies, it considers montage as a theatrical method, with particular reference to the living newspaper form, as well as British theatre’s use of film as a performance device in original plays (Lionel Britton’s Brain, for example) and adaptations (Unity’s version of Aristocrats). The chapter concludes by questioning the differences between these two interconnected performance arts through the work of Ossia Trilling.