Theatrical performance "The Third International" (Petrograd. 1919)

Kibardin Artem Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0003-0614-0226 Lecturer, Department of Directing Theatrical Performances and Holidays, St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture 191186, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, nab. Dvortsovaya, 2 atmosgroup@yandex.ru

A year before the premiere of the Petrograd performances of 1920 – "The Mysteries of Liberated Labor" by Yu. P. Annenkov, "The Blockade of Russia" by S. E. Radlov, "To the World Commune" by K. A. Mardzhanov and "The Capture of the Winter Palace" by N. N. Evreinov, a Theater and Drama Workshop was organized by order of the Red Army command (1919-1920) - the circle where the revolutionary "staging as a special kind of theatrical spectacle" was first formed ^{[8, p. 2]}. It was there that, under the guidance of theater teachers-directors, the first mass revolutionary performances were prepared, the search for a special stage form for depicting "barricades and squares" was carried out ^{[1, p. 54]}.

Created on the initiative of a former artillery officer, a graduate of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University Nikolai Glebovich Vinogradov-Mammoth (1893-1967), the Workshop had a significant impact on the development of scenic principles in the direction of mass performances. The productions "The Overthrow of the Autocracy" (1919), "The Third International" (1919), "Bloody Sunday" (1920), "The Sword of Peace" (1920) and "The Death of the Commune" (1920) were played both on specialized stages (the Iron Hall of the People's House, the Ciniselli Circus), and on open squares and parks of Petrograd, Civil War fronts under the leadership of M. Ya. Apletin, N. N. Bakhtin, N. G. Vinogradov-Mammoth, G. I. Gidoni, A. I. Piotrovsky, S. E. Radlov, N. A. Shcherbakov, etc. The analysis of mass performances of these years suggests that during the year of the Workshop's active creative activity, a staging method was formed, the techniques of which covered not only the dramaturgy of the "theater of the collective hero" ^[2], but also the methods of acting, spatial-decorative and musical design. With each new production, starting with "The Overthrow of the Autocracy" (1919), the "idea of the mystical heroic-monumental theater" was consistently implemented ^{[4, p. 666]}. 

The article will focus on the second staging of the Workshop, dedicated to the creation of the international organization "Communist International", which united the communist parties of various countries since 1919. 

After the success of the first performance - "The Overthrow of the Autocracy" (1919), the Theater and Drama Workshop of the Red Army, the Political Directorate of the Air Defense was instructed to urgently organize a new propaganda performance for Red Army soldiers and residents of the city. The place of action of the "Third International" was the square in front of the People's House in Alexander Park (now the Baltic House Theater-festival), since the People's House was installed on a high plinth in human height, had long and wide terraces along the facade along the buildings, ready stairs and platforms for performances necessary for street performance.

By May 1, 1919, in addition to an extensive celebration program with traveling troupes around the city, the Workshop presented its theatrical performance in the open air. The "Bulletin of the Theater" spoke about the performance as follows: "this is, in fact, not a play, but staged revolutionary slogans. A number of slogans that the popular uprising lives by. These slogans are woven into a kind of living scheme, and the performers embroider their own dialogue according to it" ^{[5, p.7]}. The script actually did not exist, instead a scenario plan was proposed, consisting of key points: "the death of the old world and the struggle for the new world with the call of those fighting under the Red Banners" ^{[5, p.7]}. All dialogues were replaced by singing on a similar theme, a procession of allegorical figures and a pantomime.

The People's House was artfully draped, and a scarlet banner with the inscription was located above the entrance: "Long live the Third International!". An orchestra was located next to the banner, and all the artists and a platoon of sappers were hiding behind the banner. All the personified heroes of the performance had a megaphone with them, so in any place of the square, despite the wind and weather conditions, the text spoken by the actors could be heard. The performance began with a shot of a red flare fired by the head of the Workshop Vinogradov. Then the fanfarists played the signal "Attention", and the Red Army soldier Osipov announced through a megaphone the beginning of a folk game in honor of the Third International. 

After the solemn overture, a guard of honor lines up in the center of the terrace. The first episode "Parade of troops in honor of the Third International" tells about the creation of this international organization, which included the association of workers of the whole planet "white, yellow and black" ^{[1, p. 108]}. These workers were really invited representatives of foreign organizations (real heroes). Having bypassed the guard of honor, under the applause of a large crowd and the volleys of twelve guns, foreign workers occupy the center of the stage and watch the military parade.

The architecture of the People's House makes it possible to effectively build a parade of troops: along the wide ramps from left to right, first the Red Sailors in white caps and white blouses with blue collars march, then the squadron of the Life Guards of the Hussar regiment in red dolmans and menties embroidered with gold laces. Ahead are trumpeters with silver trumpets. After the squadron, the infantry enters the system. Green ranks in helmets with a five-pointed star filled the entire space in front of the People's House. The blue squares of the girls from the militia detachments complete the parade. They climb the steps of the terrace and disappear behind a scarlet banner that serves as a backdrop for an improvised scene. Thus, a theatrical military parade becomes a prologue to the action, in which mass heroes – participants of the performance are exhibited. The beginning of the action is the announcement of an alarm. As soon as the foreign workers, after the parade presented for them, stand in front of the scarlet banner, the fanfarists give the signal "attention", the Red Army soldiers announce the danger and urge them to fight back against "the servants of world capital - the White Guard generals and admirals" ^{[1, p. 108]}. 

Then, in the traditions of the farcical theater, caricature images of White Guard military leaders – Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich were presented. Kolchak was played by a dry, tall Red Army soldier, whose arms and legs were as if on hinges. Denikin was presented as an elegant general, a lady's boyfriend, in trousers with lampas and a white cambric handkerchief with lace – a Red Army soldier in the image of Denikin fanned himself from unpleasant odors. Russian Russian and Turkish Yudenich as "the conqueror of all the Caucasians" was hyperbolized in the image of a drunken, obese Russian peasant who was not standing on his feet ^{[1, p. 109]}. 

Each of the White Guard commanders was assigned a comic scene with the participation of Red Army soldiers. For example, Kolchak examined the crowd through a telescope and called on workers to hang, revolutionary cities and villages to burn. Immediately, an actor in a zipun and bast shoes with an axe in his belt and a rifle on his shoulders ran out of the clouds of smoke arranged by the sappers, agitating the peasants to run after him into the taiga to partisan. 

The real slogans and orders of the military leaders served as the supporting journalistic material for improvisational sketches in comic scenes, with the help of which the movement of whites and their policies were interpreted as absurd, inhuman, opposite to the moods of the Reds. This revolutionary confrontation culminated in the third episode, dedicated to the direct clash of the red and white movements.

Kolchak, through a megaphone, calls for the help of the Entente countries, convenes church "regiments" with banners. The orchestra thunders fortissimo. In the smoke and flame of sapper bombs on the terrace, the Red Army soldiers turn over a balloon: it depicts the outline of the borders of the Soviet state, inside which the outlines of a peasant, a worker and V. I. Lenin. The ball that emerged as the central scenographic element expressed the general idea of uniting the world and symbolized the "globe of the earth". Before the eyes of the viewer, the emblem of the Communist International is formed thanks to additional details – a hammer and sickle. In the crowd, harmonious shouts of "Long live Comrade Lenin! Hurrah!". The Red Army soldiers use a megaphone to order the detachments of the Red Army to go to defeat Yudenich, Denikin, Kolchak. The parade of troops, as if in reverse order, begins the offensive. They storm the terrace occupied by White Guard officers. Cavalry, slender regiments, militia detachments – all rush to the central stage area. It's like a game of "Cossacks-robbers", only on the scale of a large area, with enlarged regiments, cavalry, cavalry and smoke special effects. The movement of the "reds" was presented in a realistic, heroic and pathetic style, and the "whites", on the contrary, in a comedic and satirical one. Acrobats and dancers of the Workshop in the image of priests in long cassocks roll down the steps head over heels, perform somersaults and somersaults, according to the fair tradition, the people are having fun. The hussars draw their sabers, pursue the "white men", scurry up and down the numerous steps of the People's House. The Red Army soldier Nastin (the leader in the "Overthrow") right on horseback rises to the terrace and, in the name of the Soviet Republic, betrays Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich to the court of the International Revolutionary Tribunal. The Red Army soldiers take away weapons from military leaders. Foreign workers as real heroes, declared in the exhibition, are invited to the stage as judges. 

Four trucks, which will perform the functions of medieval pedgents, are served to the facade of the People's House. On the first truck there is a "Globe" with a red silhouette of the Soviet Republic and an orchestra, on the second, decorated with revolutionary posters and banners, judges are members of the Comintern. On the third, plastered with caricatures of military leaders, the defendants – Kolchak, Yudenich and Denikin, on the last truck, bringing up the revolutionary procession, the orchestra was located. The Red Army soldier Nastin orders the defendants to be imprisoned in the casemates of the Peter and Paul Fortress before the tribunal. 

The finale of the performance, in essence, is a procession of trucks and spectators to the bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress. To the cheers of the crowd, the fiery speeches of the speakers, the army of spectators surrenders Kolchak, Yudenich and Denikin to the commandant of the fortress. The mass game staged with the Red Army soldiers turns into spontaneous popular rallies about the current moment ^{[1, p. 112]}. In fact, Vinogradov builds the action in the rehearsed part of the performance in such a way that in the improvisational, final part, already uncontrolled by him, the crowd of spectators becomes to some extent a co-creator on a par with the actors of the Red Army. The spectator here, as S.M. Eisenstein later formulated in the theory of theater in 1923, is formed "in the desired orientation (mood)" ^[9]. The detention of the White Guard generals and their transfer by the audience to the commandant of the fortress is this "desired orientation" that the director wanted to receive from the audience. The visualization of the outcome of the Civil War, presented in the improvisational finale by the actors and the audience, was designed to increase the morale of the Red Army and stabilize the socio-political situation in Petrograd. In the Aesthetics of Performativity, E. Fischer-Lichte calls such a principle a "response loop" ^{[7, p. 69]}, created by specific staging means aimed at a certain reaction of the audience. It can also be said that in this Red Army experience of 1919, the prerequisites for the appearance of a happening are visible, in which events take place with the participation of the artist, but are not completely controlled by him. 

The "Third International" used the expressive architectural possibilities of not only the People's House (gentle slopes, steep stairs, terraces and platforms around the perimeter), but also the Alexander Park and the Peter and Paul Fortress as real urban objects of scenic action. The multi-factored platform of the facade of the People's House allowed us to conditionally solve both game scenes (feast, presentation of foreign workers) and battle-monumental (military parade, storming of the White Guard camp). 

In the second performance, the boundaries of stage time were blurred: the plot developed first in the recent past (March 1919 – the date of the founding of the Comintern) – the prehistory of the White Guard military leaders, then in the present tense – the storming of the White camp (the same process actually took place on the fronts of the Civil War), the finale took place in the future, which will come if successful performance of the Red Army in decisive battles (military tribunal). The finale of the performance turned into a spontaneous rally taking place in the present tense. 

The involvement of non–theatrical forces in the production and the inclusion of their expressive capabilities in the artistic structure of the performance is another feature of the second performance of the Workshop. A detachment of female policemen, military units, delegations of foreign workers' organizations, an orchestra, artillery, infantrymen, Red Navy, cavalrymen, sappers were involved in the participation. Thanks to the last participants, the emphasis on pyrotechnic expressive means was intensified in the theatrical performance. This process began back in the "Overthrow of the autocracy", but on the scale of the area it received a greater scope and effect (the exit of a village peasant from the smoke, the conditional burning of cattle, the storming of the white camp). 

Elements of the symbolism of state power (Lenin's profile, hammer and sickle, globe) are actively added and fixed in the figurative system of the political spectacle. In proportion to the scale of the square, the number of banners with revolutionary and military slogans, cartoon posters depicting enemies, scarlet canvases and banners increased. The real uniforms of the military detachments, the church outfits of the clergy, banners and canvas fabrics, as well as specially created draperies of trucks, decorated backdrop and stretch marks created the image of a mass revolutionary spectacle.

According to historian S. A. Limanova, the most popular form of celebration at that time were dramatizations: "they allowed us to set the general theme of the celebration, and then implement it with the help of prepared "templates", but with the constant opportunity to improvise and actively involve the audience in the creative process. The performance, like the story itself, was recreated literally before our eyes" ^[3]. Vinogradov in The Third International, as in the previous production, leaves room for improvisational moments for both actors and viewers. One part of the performance is fully rehearsed and brought together, and the other is formed right in front of the audience (a military parade, a tribunal of foreign workers, a rally and a march to the Peter and Paul Fortress). This is one of the key principles of directing mass performances – the activation of the viewer. 

For the directors of theatrical forms, the desire to make the viewer an accomplice of the performance is extremely important. Soviet director of mass performances A.D. Silin, studying the experiments of American Dream Theater, Mobile Theater, Sixth Street Theater, Performance Group Theater of the late 1950s and early 1960s, conditionally identifies two methods of activating the viewer ("luring" and "provocation") and suggests use them in the context of directing mass performances. Silin quotes Richard Schechner, the largest performance theorist: ""involvement in stage action is one of the ways to awaken in the audience the need for genuine human communication, to revive contacts between people <...> By encouraging the participation of the audience, the theater educates them in civic activity and thereby contributes to the change of the social system as a whole." Aren't the tasks facing us similar now? That's why it seems important to me to study the directorial methods of involvement in actions that these theaters used" ^{[6, p. 132]}. It can be said that the first techniques of activating the viewer were already applied in Petrograd in 1919. 

It is also important that the director will not see the final version of his production until the premiere, since it is almost impossible to gather everyone involved in the performance for a dress rehearsal. Everything comes down together with individual performers, the control accompaniment within the performance for the participating forces is conducted according to iconic signal scenes (fanfare, sirens, shots, choral exclamations). On the day of the premiere, the audience themselves become active participants in some scenes, complementing the sound score of the performance with choral chants, shouts and whistles, and approving applause. 

When staging a theatrical performance in the open air, the director most acutely faced the question of the relationship between the real and the illusory. The specificity of the form, on the one hand, is formed taking into account theatrical traditions in the depiction of heroes, the development of conflict, end-to-end action, scenographic and musical solutions, on the other hand, it actively absorbs elements of real life: urban architectural objects, cars and trucks, cavalry, banners and banners, popular rallies, processions and rejoicings. Resolved spontaneously, sometimes intuitively in this view, the issue of including non-artistic elements in the production will receive final resolution in the circuses of 1920.

Thus, during the reconstruction of the theatrical performance "The Third International", it was found that for the first time the method of activating the viewer was introduced by N.G. Vinogradov-Mammoth back in 1919, and a clear division of heroes into positive and negative with the appropriate manner of performance, the introduction of real heroes and the combination of theatrical and non–artistic elements in the structure of the spectacle - these the principles influenced the direction of subsequent Petrograd performances in 1920 .