Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present: Pages 43-58

The Magnificent Cuckold

            - The limits of artwork, theater performances, circuses, and movies were endless, with no restrictions in the early 1900’s.

            - Constructivism style of art made art more realistic, expressive, and theatrical to any time, place, or position.

            - The Magnificent Cuckold stage, created by Crommelynck in 1922, was the first stage to have flats, platforms, steps, chutes, sails, and enlarged props. Essentially, it was a playground for acrobatic actors. A modern example of this stage can be demonstrated in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.

Retrieved from: www.theguardian.com

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The Blue Blouse & the Factory of the Eccentric Actor

            - The Blue Blouse Group, established in October of 1923, was an avant-garde theater team who consisted of over 100,000 club members from across the country.

            - These people dedicated themselves to the arts through all sorts of synchronized forms and dynamic movements.

            - The Factory of the Eccentric Actor Group (or FEKS) influenced the design for the large-scale stage props and setting. The stages were unique, however, in the way that Fortunato Depero had incorporated them. He created a theater where “everything turns—disappears—reappears, multiplies and breaks, pulverizes and overturns, trembles and transforms.”

            - The FEKS focused mainly on features of typical American culture including “high technology..., comic books..., advertisements and so on.”

Moscow is Burning

            - Moscow is Burning was the final piece written by Mayakovsky before he took his own life a week later. It honored the 25^th anniversary of Russia’s Bloody Sunday that happened in 1930.

            - The event of Bloody Sunday hence forth had initiated a theatrical and artistic rebellion against cultural activity.

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Wedekind in Munich

            - Cabaret theaters became more popular in the 1916’s and onward for the intimate feeling and closeness between the actors and the audience.

            - However, a man such as Frank Wedekind abused this enclosed interaction by writing very sexually uncomfortable plays made to be performed in a cabaret theater. He was shortly (and obviously) exiled for censorship violations.

            - Wedekind continued to write explicit plays after his release from prison such as King Nicolo and Pandora’s Box (if anyone’s interested...).

Kokoschka in Vienna

            - Kokoschka, another playwright of the early 1900’s, incorporated heavy use of improvisation and stages with boards, planks, towers, and cages. He emphasized exaggeration, emotion, and drama to a fixed, stereotypical character.

Cabaret Voltaire

            - Cabaret Voltaire, created by Ball and Hennings in 1916, was a small café-theater that welcomed all forms of art and entertainment with an emphasis on music and poetry readings.

            - Many upcoming artists contributed and performed in Cabaret Voltaire, and it grew into a common gathering place for those who sought it in Russia.

By: Bretten James