Theatre in the Solovki Prison Camp

Book excerpt: First Published in 1996. The Russian Theatre Archive makes available in English the best avantgarde plays, from the pre-Revolutionary period to the present day. It features monographs on major playwrights and theatre directors, introductions to previously unknown works, and studies of the main artistic groups and periods. Plays are presented in performing edition translations, including (where appropriate) musical scores, and instructions for music and dance. Whenever possible the translated texts will be accompanied by videotapes of performances of plays in the original language. Prison camp theatre is a theme justified by actual life, even though the marriage of such concepts as 'theatre' and 'prison camp' may appear, to the ordinary mind, preposterous.