The modern theatre has been greatly influenced by the developments of theatre in Russia. Russia has produced a wealth of actors, directors, playwrights, and theaters, including Michael and Anton Chekov, Constantin Stanislavski, and the Moscow Art Theatre,
The modern theatre has been greatly influenced by the developments of theatre in Russia. Russia has produced a wealth of actors, directors, playwrights, and theaters, including Michael and Anton Chekov, Constantin Stanislavski, and the Moscow Art Theatre, to name a few. But despite having produced such influential figures, Russia got a rather late start on "institutionalized" theatre. Until the mid-eighteenth century Russia lacked distinct theatrical spaces or intricate acting styles like those that had already developed in the western European theatre and elsewhere. Although Russian theatre lacked an institutionalized theatre until the mid-eighteenth century, there was still plenty of performance occurring in the country. Most of this performance stems from rituals and religion. These were used for expanded into performances for entertainment as well as for use as a manipulative tool. This group will dig further into the accounts of russian history to uncover the shape of religious performance during the 18th century.
To narrow our focus to the religious performance in the 17th century, our group started with a general web search to gain a familiarity with the Russian theatre pre 1750s. From this general search we learned specific names and movements with which we could narrow in on more specific information. However, we quickly found that the level of specificity we were hoping for was more difficult to find than we were expecting. That is why we chose to continue our exploration of religious performance for the course of the entire 17th century.
In order to gain a holistic view of the religious theatre in Russia in the 17th and early 18th centuries, we will explore the people, plays and politics active at the time. We will cond