Living Newspaper Theatre and Therapy Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/44/2 (166)/107/1820717/10542040051058735.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 John W. Casson The historical development of Living Newspapers can be traced from the ideas of the futurists in the early part of the century, through experimental theatres in the Soviet Union and Vienna, to the worldwide development of a theatre form. In this article I consider the relationship between this theatre and Jacob Levy Moreno’s Theatre of Spontaneity, psychodrama, and sociodrama, and evaluate the therapeutic potential of this technique. Italy, – In an Italian futurist manifesto on the theatre, written by F.T. Marinetti, Emilio Settimelli, and Bruno Corra insisted on a new theatre that is “born of improvisation, lightninglike intuition, from suggestive and revealing actuality. We believe that a thing is valuable to the extent that it is improvised, not exten- sively prepared” (in Drain :). Nothing should get in the way of the artist’s natural talent: “he must be preoccupied with creating synthetic expres- sions of cerebral energy that have the absolute value of novelty”: DRAMATIZE ALL THE DISCOVERIES (no matter how unlikely, weird, and anti-theatrical) THAT OUR TALENT IS DISCOVERING IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS, IN ILL-DEFINED FORCES, IN PURE ABSTRACTION, IN THE PURELY CEREBRAL, THE PURELY FANTASTIC, IN RECORD-SETTING AND BODY-MADNESS. SYMPHONIZE THE AUDIENCE’S SENSIBILITY BY EXPLOR- ING IT, STIRRING UP ITS LAZIEST LAYERS WITH EVERY MEANS POSSIBLE; ELIMINATE THE PRECONCEPTION OF THE FOOTLIGHTS BY THROWING NETS OF SENSATION BE- TWEEN STAGE AND AUDIENCE; THE STAGE ACTION WILL INVADE THE ORCHESTRA SEATS, THE AUDIENCE. (in Drain :) In an earlier manifesto () Marinetti described the variety theatre as: “a cumulus of events unfolded at great speed [...] and now let’s have a look at the Balkans: King Nicholas, Enver-Bey, [...] fistfights between Serbs and The Drama Review , (T), Summer . Copyright © New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John W. Casson Bulgars [...] instructive, satirical pantomimes [...] a more or less amusing news- paper” (–). Soviet Russia, – In a decree of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Commu- nist Party advocated public readings of the news, illustrated with “demonstra- tions,” illuminated by cinema and magic lantern shows, and “concert numbers” to ensure the dissemination of news and revolutionary propaganda Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/44/2 (166)/107/1820717/10542040051058735.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 amongst the illiterate (Cosgrove :). Mikhail Pustynin was a poet and theatre director who is credited by Robert Leach with developing the idea of the Living Newspaper so that “news could be made more accessible through dramatisation” (Leach :). In he was director of the Vitebsk Rosta agency, a telegraphic agency using posters to spread revolutionary ideas, and set up the Terevsat (Theatre of Revolutionary Satire), whose aim was: to express in theatrical terms the subjects of the Rosta posters. Terevsat came to Moscow in and a number of groups were soon to be found performing in streets, factories and stations. Its short sketches, in which music had an important role, drew largely on review, operetta, vaude- ville and the tchastuchka (rhymed popular songs with a monotonous rhythm). Initially one major aim of Terevsat was the diffusion of infor- mation and it evolved its own forms of Living Newspaper [...]. (Bradby and McCormick :) Pustynin later worked for the Blue Blouse Theatre. Between and Vladimir Mayakovski, a leading exponent of the Russian futurist group, had drawn some Rosta posters (Bradby and McCormick :). In Mayakovski wrote a Living Newspaper that was directed by Nikolai Foregger at Terevsat’s Moscow Studio (Leach :). Sergei Eisenstein “was a keen follower of Marinetti’s futurist ideas” (Bradby and McCormick :). Eisenstein “gave an example of theatrical- ised living newspaper with [...a] montage of attractions in his agit-buffonade The Wise Man” (in Stourac and McCreery :). Eisenstein acknowledged Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Mayakovski as fellow futurists (Drain :). Meyerhold utilized the genre of Living Newspaper in Give Us Europe (in Stourac and McCreery :). Blue Blouse’s inspiration was drawn from the futurist interest in music hall and va- riety theatre, and from the experimental work of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Nikolai Forreger. In Boris Yuzhanin, a teacher of journalism, started the Blue Blouse Soviet Living Newspaper touring theatre company from his base at the Mos- cow Institute of Journalism. The blue blouse was the basic costume of the performers by which they showed solidarity with the factory workers who wore loose blue smocks. Yuzhanin aimed to offer the group’s audiences, many of whom could not read, a “living newspaper”—a concept which spread to left-wing groups internationally. Yuzhanin refused to use professional writers, but practised “lit-montage”, i.e., the scripts were cut-ups, principally of ma- terial from papers and magazines. He staged them in revue style, per- forming in factories, workers clubs and in the open air. (Drain :) Living Newspapers kept their illiterate audiences in touch with the is- sues of the day. The subjects were by no means always topical or politi- Living Newspaper cal. [...] Often a Living Newspaper could include an item or two of more general educational content such as the dramatized Fight Against Typhus [...] or looking after and breeding hens. (Leach :, ) Blue Blouse performances offered: skits, verse, monologues, and avant-garde oratory among an uninter- rupted montage of scenes, songs, music, dance, mime, acrobatics and gymnastics. Messages were punched home with bold visual effects. Blue Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/44/2 (166)/107/1820717/10542040051058735.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Blouse offered a model on which countless variations have been devised by agit-prop and guerilla theatre groups ever since. (Drain :) While many Soviet Living Newspapers were written, the actors did impro- vise when necessary: The style of acting resembled the old troupes of strolling players and was often rooted in improvisation based on character types. Because the news changed day by day the actors often had only time to agree on the form of the sketch before going on stage, and performing in the open air they frequently had to cope with interjections and heckling from the audi- ence. On one occasion an agitator interrupted the performance to an- nounce the defeat of Denikin. The audience burst out cheering and the actors improvised a scene of Denikin dancing, then being chased off by Red Army soldiers. (Leach :) The Blue Blouse group was hugely successful: “In its first two months of existence Blue Blouse performed to , people” (Stourac and McCreery :). Other groups started up on the same pattern [...] eventually more than five thousand Blue Blouse groups were active, with a membership of ,. [...] In Blue Blouse visited Germany, where the workers’ theatre movement was already practising similar techniques [...]. (Drain :) According to Robert Leach, “Blue Blouse were so successful they spawned innumerable Blue Blouse groups abroad, in England, France, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, China, U.S.A. and Germany” (:). It even spread to Japan by : Seki Sano, who directed many Living Newspapers, later became a close associate of Hallie Flanagan when he eventually moved to the U.S.A. to es- cape arrest (Cosgrove :). Such spontaneity and creativity was not, however, attractive to Stalin: within a year of their successful German tour, Blue Blouse was officially dis- banded. It was a year of forced collectivization and massive, often brutal, social reorganization. An alternative view is that Blue Blouse died because audiences became bored by the propagandizing, clichés, and poor quality of this agitprop theatre (Stourac and McCreery :, ). In fact they were out-maneuvered in the artistic politics of the development of Stalinist Social Realism (–). Moreno in Vienna, – In , the year before Yuzhanin set up Blue Blouse, Moreno established Das Stegreiftheater (Theatre of Spontaneity) in Vienna. The first edition of his book on this experimental theatre, Das Stegreiftheater, was published in . One of the methods for promoting spontaneity Moreno used was to base improvisations on John W. Casson the day’s news: in he called this the “dramatized newspaper” (in the edition of the Theatre of Spontaneity he calls it “living newspaper”). Given the time it takes to write and publish a book it seems likely that Moreno was creating the- atre from the news in or even from (see Marineau :–). Vienna lies halfway between Italy and Russia: is it not possible, even likely, that Moreno would have heard of the futurists’ ideas? The futurist manifesto quoted above shows spontaneity was an important source of creative energy for these artists as well. Central to Moreno’s developing ideas was the concept of spontaneity: Moreno explained that the idea of using the news of the day as Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/dram/article-pdf/44/2 (166)/107/1820717/10542040051058735.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 a source for the Theatre of Spontaneity was to counter the suspicion of critics who supposed, when the performance was successful, that the pieces were re- hearsed. Moreno “turned his actors into journalists, sending them into the streets of Vienna to pick up news of incidents there, or bring in national or international events and disasters of all kinds” (Zerka Moreno ). Jonathan Fox points out that the Russian Theatre was known in Vienna: the New Theatre Festival program featured an article by R.F. Muller on “Die Neue Russiche Buhne.” Muller knew and reviewed Moreno’s Stegreiftheater en- thusiastically (Fox in Buer ) so it is highly likely that he and Moreno had discussed these parallel theatre developments. Russian theatre influences were certainly felt in Vienna: as early as Stanislavski’s theatre concerned with psychological truth, the Moscow Art Theatre, had toured the cities of Ger- many and Austria (Sayler :; Casson ).