Aleksandr Tairov’s Kamernyj Theatre in Moscow as an Intercultural Bridge
Abstract
This essay is based on the author’s elaboration of a large part of the introduction and one of the central chapters of the volume Aus dem Geiste der Bewegung geboren. Das Moskauer Kammertheater von Aleksandr Tairov im Spannungsfeld zwischen Russland und dem Westen (Born of the Spirit of the Movement. Aleksandr Tairov’s Moscow Kamernyj Theatre in the field of tension between Russia and the West), Köln, Böhlau, 2025. This detailed book, the result of extensive archival research and rich in photographs and documents, offers a comprehensive portrait of Tairov through a dense intertwining of memories from audience members, actors and artists, alongside autobiographical accounts. It focuses in particular on the phases of Tairov’s first and third European tours, reconstructing events that clearly illustrate the paradigm shift in Soviet policy towards its artists and towards the West, and which shed new light on the significant interplay between art and politics that conditioned his theatrical career.
Keywords
Aleksandr Tairov, Kamernyj teatr, Soviet theatre
Swetlana Lukanitschewa
Swetlana Lukanitschewa teaches and conducts research at the Institute of Theatre Studies (Institut für Theaterwissenschaft) at Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Theatre Studies at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow. In 2001, she obtained her PhD from the Institute of Theatre Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and in 2012 she completed her Habilitation at Freie Universität Berlin. Her main research interests include the history of European theatre in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, Russian theatre, the theatrical avant-garde, and interculturality. She is the author of three monographs: Verfemte Autoren. Werke von Marina Cvetaeva, Michail Bulgakov, Aleksandr Vvedenskij und Daniil Charms auf den deutschen Bühnen der 90er Jahre (Banned Authors: Works by Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov, Alexander Vvedensky, and Daniil Kharms on German Stages in the 1990s), Tübingen, 2003; Das Theatralitätskonzept von Nikolai Evreinov: Die Entdeckung der Kultur als Performance (Nikolai Evreinov’s Concept of Theatricality: The Discovery of Culture as Performance), Tübingen, 2013; and Aus dem Geiste der Bewegung geboren. Das Moskauer Kammertheater von Aleksandr Tairov im Spannungsfeld zwischen Russland und dem Westen (Born from the Spirit of Movement: Aleksandr Tairov’s Moscow Chamber Theatre Between Russia and the West), Cologne, 2025.