Cabaret (entry)

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Stage, Cabaret, Variety Shows
CABARET (from the French word cabaret - small restaurant). At the beginning of the 20th century, it was the name for small, literary and artistic restaurants, places for meetings of poets, musicians, actors, artists and other workers of art. They were established following after the fashion of the Parisian cabarets in St. Petersburg at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Cabarets Lukomorye (headed by V. E. Meyerhold) and Distorting Mirror (headed by A. R. Kugel; both were housed in the mansion of Princess Z. I. Yusupova at the Theatre Club at 42 Liteiny Avenue) were the first to be opened in 1908, they were followed by the House of Interludes (1910), the Stray Dog (1912), the Comedians Halt (1915), the cabaret theatre Bi-Ba-Bo (1916). Theatre workers N. N. Evreinov, F. F. Komissarzhevsky, M. M. Fokin et al., poets A. A. Akhmatova, N. S. Gumilev, O. E. Mandelstam, artists A. N. Benois, M. V. Dobuzhinsky, S. Y. Sudeykin, ballerina T. P. Karsavina et al. all participated in the establishment of cabarets. Cabarets served as meeting places for like minded people, laboratories of new art forms, it was here that Meyerhold, Evreinov, Karsavina showed their new works, A. A. Blok, V. V. Mayakovsky et al. read their poems. Genres of parody, merry improvisation, serious poetry, classical music were mixed in cabarets, they became an original synthesis of the traditions of literary salons of the beginning of the 19th century, where mock soirees at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries and theatre skits took place. Soon after October 1917, all the cabarets stopped running. At the beginning of the 1920s, attempts were made to revive them in the form of either miniature theatres (the Show-Booth, Lame Joe, 13 Italyanskaya Street et al.) or political cabarets in the genre of lively newspaper (the Blue Blouse). All the cabarets were closed at the end of the 1920s with the end of the New Economic Policy, although the cabaret tradition survived in the form of skits, mock theatres at the flats of people from creative intelligentsia. In the 1920s, the Little Big Theatre developed the same genre in Leningrad (the House of Arts of the All-Union Theatre Society, 86 Nevsky Prospect). From 1929, fun evenings were arranged in the building of the Leningrad Department of the All-Union Theatre Society for a long time, the texts were written by V. S. Polyakov. In the 1940s, a night theatre later called the Blue Bird was established at the House of Actors of the All-Union Theatre Society (formerly the House of Arts of the All-Union Theatre Society) under the supervision of V. Y. Dragunsky. Regular theatrical skits (producer A. A. Belinsky) were arranged there in the Palace for Workers of Arts from the 1960s to 1980s. Attempts to revive the cabaret genre of pre-revolutionary Russia have been made in St. Petersburg since 1991 (the Comic Trust, under the supervision of V. Fisson and N. Fisson; the Fourth Wall, under the supervision of V. S. Zhuk et al.). These theatres do not have a permanent location, they usually give performances, as is only fitting, in the Chaplin-Club (59 Chaykovsky Street) and in the Stray Dog, on the stage of S'Tantsiya (the House of Culture of the First Five-Year Plan, 34 Dekabristov Street) etc.

References: Уварова Е. Д. Эстрадный театр: миниатюры, обозрения, мюзик-холлы (1917-1945). М., 1983. С. 50-92, 240-297; Тихвинская Л. И. Кабаре и театры миниатюр в России, 1908-1917. М., 1995.

Y. N. Kruzhnov. Akhmatova Anna Andreevna
Belinsky Alexander Arkadievich
Benois Alexander Nikolaevich
Blok G.P.
Dobuzhinsky Mstislav Valerianovich
Dragunsky Viktor Yuzefovich
Evreinov Nikolay Nikolaevich
Fisson Natalia Vladimirovna
Fisson Vadim Ilyich
Fokin Valery Vladimirovich
Gumilev Nikolay Stepanovich
Karsavina Tamara Platonovna
Komissarzhevsky Fedor Fedorovich
Kugel Alexander Rafailovich
Mandelstam Osip Emilievich
Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich
Meyerhold Vsevolod Emilievich
Polyakov V.S.
Sudeykin Sergey Yurievich
Yusupova Zinaida Ivanovna, Duchess
Zhuk Vadim Semenovich
Dekabristov St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 34
Italyanskaya Street/Saint Petersburg, city, house 13
Liteiny Ave/Saint Petersburg, city, house 42
Nevsky prospect/Saint Petersburg, city, house 86
Tchaikovskogo St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 59
Тихвинская Л. И. Кабаре и театры миниатюр в России, 1908-1917. М., 1995
Уварова Е. Д. Эстрадный театр: миниатюры, обозрения, мюзик-холлы (1917-1945). М., 1983 Dom Intermedy, cabaret theatre
Stray Dog, Cabaret
Comedians Halt, Cabaret
Bi-Ba-Bo, Cabaret Theatre
Show-Booth, Cabaret Theatre
1908