Proletcult Theatre

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Proletcult Theatre is a Russian theatrical tradition that was concerned with the powerful expression of ideological content as political propaganda in the years following the revolution of 1917.

It was used as a tool of political agitation which promoted a culture of the factory-floor and industrial motifs, but also folk singing and avant-garde^[1]. Plot was unimportant but the goal was in shocking the audience with its style of performance, lighting techniques, props, radio broadcasts, blown-up newspaper headlines and slogans, projected films, circus elements, etc.

The Proletcult Theatre attempted to affect the audience psychologically and emotionally, producing a shock in the spectator, the effect of which is to make the viewer aware of the condition of their own lives. This style is often referred to as the theatre of attractions, where an attraction is any aggressive emotional shock that provides the opportunity to raise awareness of the ideological reality of life (to “defamiliarize the familiar”), particularly the mundane material reality.

Russian film maker Sergei Eisenstein was at one time in charge of the Proletcult Theatre before pursuing his film work. He continued many of the experimental and ideologically expressive elements of this theatrical form in his films and intellectual montage technique.

Proletcult collapsed at the end of the civil war due to external as well as internal factors, such disputes among leaders and between intellectuals and workers, it lingered on in vestigial form in the 1920s.^[1]